Context

You ("Pub Inc.") and another company ("Co Pub Inc.") are Co-Publishers of a work. Each of you controls a portion of the rights, and the work may also include unaffiliated contributors who remain uncontrolled.

The purpose of this use case is to show how to file a new co-published work with a Collective Management Organization (CMO). If you are updating an existing work, the data you send is exactly the same — the only difference is that the CMO treats it as an update rather than a new registration.

You declare the chain of rights: all contributors (Authors, Composers, Publishers), the controlled and uncontrolled shares, and the organizations they are affiliated with. This ensures that societies have a complete and transparent view of the work’s ownership and administration.

All examples below are fully CWR compliant

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Disclaimer:

The examples shown in this documentation are provided for demonstration purposes only. They illustrate how co-publishing agreements can be represented in Reprtoir in a way that is fully CWR compliant.

Your own registrations may differ depending on the specific terms of your agreements and the requirements of the societies (CMO/PRO/MRO) you work with. If you are filing without a Designated Publisher, be especially careful to coordinate with your co-publishers to avoid duplicate works or conflicting registrations Always adapt these examples to your actual situation.

Case 1: Designated Publisher Filing

In this scenario, you, the Original Publisher ("Pub Inc."), and another company ("Co Pub Inc.") are Co-Publishers of a work. You are appointed as the "Designated Publisher" (sometimes called the "Leader"), which means you are responsible for filing the registration on behalf of both parties. Both publishers appear separately in the rights data, and the contributor or contributors must be listed under each publisher that controls them. Since you are the Designated Publisher, you are marked as the filing party.

This setup ensures that the CMO receives a single, unified registration that reflects the entire chain of rights, while avoiding duplicate declarations.

Ownership Box (Worldwide)

The Ownership rights are declared in the Worldwide box for both publishers and their contributors.

Case 2: Independent Publisher Filings

In this scenario, you, the Original Publisher ("Pub Inc."), and another company ("Co Pub Inc.") are Co-Publishers of a work, but no Designated Publisher is appointed. Each publisher is responsible for filing their own registration with their respective CMO. In your declaration, you only include the shares and contributors you control. "Co Pub Inc." must also appear in the chain of rights but is declared as uncontrolled, since they will make their own registration independently.

This approach is fully valid, but it requires strong coordination between publishers. All parties must use consistent metadata (title, ISWC, identifiers, contributors) to avoid duplicate works being created. A common best practice is for the first publisher to obtain the ISWC from their registration and share it with the other publisher, who can then use it to complete their own filing correctly.

Ownership Box (Worldwide)

The Ownership rights are declared in the Worldwide box, showing your controlled shares and the Co-Publisher as uncontrolled.

⚠️ Depending on the CMO, you may be asked not to declare the Co-Publisher as controlled, even if contractually they are. In that case, only the Designated Publisher should be marked as controlling, and the Co-Publisher’s shares should be declared as uncontrolled. Always confirm with your CMO what they expect from you.