Its present authorisation is granted for one three-year duration as of 1 February 2005, and is renewable. The agency manages the rights of reproduction and of public loan for the textual and pictorial works of its author and editor members, in the Grand Duchy and in the whole world. Romain Jeblick, Secretary General of Luxorr, says that, "Historically, there are three classic assets for a company. There is land, there is capital and there is the labour force." Today, listed companies have five types of assets. "As we become an information society the intangible assets - IP - become more important."

According to a 2006 Minister of Economy, France report on IP, somewhere in the region of 75 to 90% of the capitalisation of listed companies is constituted by intangible assets such as trademarks, patents and know-how.

More and more of what mankind is doing is dealing with knowledge and this should be protected. It should be protected for security reasons. "Information should be dependable and sage," Jeblick says.

It should be protected to ensure the quality of information. A recent AFP survey in a French university revealed that up to 97% of students use the Internet as a primary information source for their day-to-day work, and yet most people's queries are based on the unstructured and untrustworthy information part of the Web.

"Education is the alpha and the omega," says Jeblick. "The problem of unsecured information exists on a global scale." If the source of information is not identified, then the student might simply be plagiarising. Unless the author is cited, how can anyone be sure of the reliability of such information? "Students are developing a 'copy paste mentality'. If we want thinkers to be creative and innovative then we need to raise students to think for themselves."

Another point he raises is that copyright should also be seen as protection against counterfeit, not just for product quality but product safety. Copyright is the guarantee of authenticity, something consumers absolutely demand when it comes to medicine, or baby seats or any number of products one hopes are trustworthy and controlled. But of course there is another reason. An author needs to make a living.

The questions remain, however, how many of these collected fees would go to editors instead of authors and, how much of that revenue would be paid to editors outside Luxembourg?

The value of IP is being understood rapidly by other countries. Luxembourg needs to catch up to remain competitive. "For example," Jeblick notes, "The Chinese have always been considered as IP rights infringers, but they are realising that patents have a real value for their government. China is about to overtake Europe in the inscription of patents, and thus IP rights are becoming legitimised legally in China. They will close the gap rather rapidly."

Digitalisation

The protection of author rights and IP has been made that much more difficult through digitalisation. "People should know that IP is a right and this is especially true for youth," warns Jeblick. Youth should start considering what they are taking away from themselves, such as potential future employment eaten away by IP infringement. "The new technological environment makes copying so easy and such copying has become so habitual that the young do not even think about the fact it might be stealing. While it is our task to assist those authors and editors who are concerned about their IP rights, our second task is education and to sensitise the public."

"We are now one and a half years old," says Jeblick. "In our first year our task was to put everything in place - the contracts, literature about what we are doing, etc. Our second task was to inform the big users such as the state and the EU institutions. Thirdly we must inform the private actor. Big users have approached us and these are important mandates. Those who do not contact us, we will contact them."

Where rights respecters go, others follow. In January 2007, in a move that helped to prove to Luxembourg and Europe that the Luxembourg financial centre respects copyright, and which simultaneously offered further credibility to the Luxorr/Sacem ambitions, the ABBL signed framework agreements with both collection agencies covering the use of certain types of copyright by its 134 members. Fernand Grulms, Member of [>>ù114] [>>ù112] the Executive Committee, ABBL, explains how this initiative came about.

"Romain Jeblick went to work as Secretary General of Luxorr. The law was existing but basically no one cared about it," says Grulms. "Romain asked if we could do something about it, like a collective convention." It took them more than one and a half years to develop this concept, but without a sort of "master agreement", Romain would have to collect from each player which would be highly complex and time consuming. "Thus, we gave the whole idea to a lawyer along with a mandate to negotiate an agreement with Romain. Due to the fact that we have this master agreement we can ask people to join at a slightly reduced fee, i.e. a rebate of about 15%. We tried to get each and every member to agree on the same terms because this avoids the necessity of lawyers, and we drew up an agreement on a lump sum basis based on the number of employees and an estimation of the number of copies that a company might make or use a year."

The ABBL had placed on their intranet for the disposal of members a Revue de Presse, which they have since learned must be a Panorama. While their members appreciated this service, they did not consider that they were infringing copyright, and of both local and international press. At a regular ABBL meeting, with approximately 50 banks at the Chamber of Commerce, ABBL's lawyer, Bob Krieps and Romain Jeblick, they explained to members about joining the agreement. Not all of the members joined but many did.

The copying issue is a complex one. Many people do it in the course of their workday. Research material and the media are used to gather information. So at the same time that most companies and institutions utilise IP, they also produce it. But in the case of the Panoramic Press, the ABBL/Luxorr agreement makes the user pay for the copying. "In this case, if we estimate a company has 200 desktops for example, then the average cost is 7,000-8,000 euros a year. This ends up being significantly cheaper than if they purchased the newspapers themselves."

On 1 February, Luxorr signed an important reciprocal agreement in London with the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Ltd in the UK. Eva Perez Nanclares, the CLA's International Development Manager, said, "This agreement will help Luxorr to further develop and grow its licensing coverage at home. That can only be good for authors and publishers across all of Europe."