[Mr. Mitko Chatalbashev, Director of European Affairs of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) arrived to Bishkek for a work visit. He met with Mr. Ulan Melisbek, Kyrgyzpatent Director and specialists of the Office.

The object of this visit consists in familiarizing with the situation of Professional Rules observance in the CISAC member countries. These Rules were adopted by the CISAC two years ago. According to the visitor, choice of countries for such inspection was arbitrary. Besides Kyrgyzstan the Confederation leadership intends to visit Russia, Ukraine and Czechia for similar mission.

-“This is not audit, but a partner check-up, - Mr. Chatalbashev explained during the meeting – The purpose of these check-ups consists in recognition by a society that the collective management by copyright is necessary by objective reasons. The development of common principles of collective management for the CISAC members should be the result of this activity.

Mr. Ulan Melisbek told that at present time the Office has reformed the system of royalties collection. The State by objective causes is not able to manage effectively authors’ rights, particularly after a significant staff reduction in the course of public administration reforming. Long ago a necessity has matured to create a system of copyright collective management and Kyrgyzpatent has begun to work in this direction. Thus Mr. Melisbek addressed to the CISAC leadership asking assistance in establishing of a public organization which would receive authorities to manage authors’ economic rights.
Mr. Chatalbashev agreed that the system, formed in Kyrgyzstan, did not meet requirements of the nowadays situation. This fact is supported by a modest amount of collected royalty annually in the Republic: about 70 thousand Euros and these figures do not change for many years. However the practice shows that the model itself of copyright management does not resolve all problems. At any case on the post Soviet area there are not any visible results despite of authors’ societies presence. Even the Russian Authors’ Society (RAS) by royalty collection occupies the same level with a such little European country as Hungary (50 million Euros annually). In this regard the neighboring Kazakhstan may exemplify: last year the local association of authors and performers collected more than one million Euros in favor of authors.