Deal sheet
- Status
- Signed and, on the evidence of SCM's own schedule, still in force. The three contracts were signed on 22 February 2019 in Praia. SCM's undated schedule of international agreements lists UNAC (Angola), SOMAS (Mozambique) and SGA (Guinea-Bissau) among its live reciprocal agreements, which is the only confirmation found that the contracts survived signature. No source read gives a term, a renewal date, a termination provision or any money that has actually flowed in either direction under any of the three.
- Type
- Licensing
- Parties
- Sociedade Cabo-verdiana de Musica, UNAC-SA, Sociedade Mocambicana de Autores, Sociedade Guineense de Autores
- Amount
- Not applicable (no amount disclosed) Not disclosed. No document read for this record states a fee, advance, commission rate, administration deduction or any other consideration attached to these three contracts. No document read states that they were concluded without consideration either, so nothing is asserted in either direction.
- Rights covered
- Reciprocal representation mandates, not an acquisition, assignment or publishing transfer. Each society authorises the other to license its repertoire in the other society's territory, to collect the resulting money and to account for it. No catalogue was assigned and no ownership moved: SCM does not own or administer the Angolan, Mozambican or Bissau-Guinean repertoire outside Cape Verde, and UNAC-SA, SOMAS and SGA acquire no interest in Cape Verdean works outside their own territories. SCM's own schedule of international agreements records all three relationships as reciprocal and limited to public performance rights (execucao publica); mechanical reproduction rights are not recorded against any of the three. A fourth instrument signed the same day was a memorandum of understanding, not a contract, with a Sao Tome and Principe society then still being constituted and not named in any source read.
- Territory
- Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Each contract is reciprocal and operates in both directions: each society licenses the counterparty repertoire inside its own national territory only.
- Announced
- 2019-02-22
- Primary document
- Official newsroom
- Sources
- Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (SPA), official newsroom item "SPA em destaque no encontro lusofono realizado em Cabo Verde sob a egide da OMPI", datelined Lisboa, 25 de Fevereiro de 2019. Fetched and read in full. It states: "No dia 22 foi celebrada a assinatura de contrato de reciprocidade entre a Sociedade Cabo-verdiana de Musica (SCM) e as sociedades de autor da Angola (UNAC-SA), Mocambique (SOMAS), Guine-Bissau (SGA) assim como um memorando de entendimento com a sociedade de autores de Sao Tome e Principe em fase de constituicao." Precision note: SPA attended the meeting at WIPO's invitation and is not itself a signatory to these three contracts, so this is an official account from a named organisation present at the signing rather than from a contracting party. · World Intellectual Property Organization, official meeting record. Fetched and read: meeting code WIPO/CCM/RAI/19, "WIPO Inter-Regional Meeting for Lusophone Countries on Collective Management and Infrastructure", "February 21 to February 22, 2019 (Praia, Cabo Verde)". Corroborates the venue and the year and places the 22 February signing inside a real WIPO-convened meeting. Note the date conflict with SPA, recorded in the caveat. · Sociedade Cabo-verdiana de Musica, "Acordos de representacao SCM com entidades internacionais", a signed six-page PDF published on SCM's own site. Fetched and read in full. Source of the 42 agreements / 37 societies / 39 reciprocal / 3 unilateral counts, the continental split (Europe 17, Africa 14, Americas 7, Asia 4), the rights split (public performance in all 42, mechanicals in 20), the 30,199,981 works and 1,103,216 rightsholders total, and the individual rows for UNAC (Angola), SOMAS (Mozambique) and SGA (Guinea-Bissau). The document is undated. Technical note: this URL requires relaxed TLS verification to fetch from our server because the host serves an incomplete certificate chain, so it fails the deal gate's own HTTP check and cannot be used as the primary source URL. · Cape Verdean press, 24 May 2019, reporting a separate SCM reciprocity contract with SAMRO signed in Johannesburg three months later, and naming SCM president Solange Cesarovna and SCM operations and IT technician Adilson Pereira as the delegation. Fetched and read in full. Cited here because its claim that the SAMRO contract covers "mais de 2 milhoes de obras musicais" sits in tension with SCM's own later schedule, which records SAMRO at 543,225 works. · SCM's own 2021 distribution report, published in full as sponsored content, 3 January 2022. Fetched and read. Gives SCM's total 2021 distribution of author's and neighbouring rights as 9,523,045 escudos, confirms SCM was constituted in 2013 and is CISAC member number 299, and confirms SCM runs its distribution on WIPO Connect. Establishes the scale against which these reciprocal agreements operate. · Cape Verdean press, 8 November 2021, on SCM's domestic licensing drive, naming SCM executive manager Lara Ramos and dating the Copyright Friendly Label licensing scheme to 2019. Fetched and read in full. Context for what SCM can actually collect at home.
Read this before citing: Recorded rather than smoothed over. First, a date conflict: SPA's account places the Praia meeting from 19 to 22 February, while WIPO's own meeting record for WIPO/CCM/RAI/19 gives 21 to 22 February 2019. Both were fetched and read. The 22 February signing date is common to both accounts and is not in dispute; only the meeting's start date is. No source read for this record resolves it, and WIPO's record covers a two-day meeting, so SPA's four-day span may cover more than one event. Second, no source read names the individuals who signed any of the three contracts, on either side. SCM's president three months later was Solange Cesarovna, but no document read places her or anyone else at the 22 February signing. Third, SCM's schedule cannot be treated as a clean register: it is undated, it carries a city ("Ouagadougou") rather than a country in the country column for its Burkinabe counterparty BBDA, it leaves one row with no entity name at all (listed only as "CHINA"), it leaves both quantity columns empty for SGA (Guinea-Bissau), and its SOMAS row is genuinely ambiguous, reading either as 578 works and 943 rightsholders or as a single number, 578,943, with nothing in the document resolving which. Fourth, an unexplained discrepancy in SCM's own numbers: Cape Verdean reporting in May 2019 said the SAMRO contract gave SCM a catalogue of more than 2 million works, while SCM's own later schedule records SAMRO at 543,225 works; because the schedule is undated, the direction and cause of that change cannot be established. Fifth, neither UNAC-SA, SOMAS nor SGA published any account of these contracts that could be found and fetched: SGA has no institutional website, and the record therefore rests on the Cape Verdean and Portuguese side of the transaction only. Sixth, no consideration of any kind is disclosed, and the existence of a fifth, undated SCM reciprocal agreement with Benin's BUBEDRA appears in the same schedule but could not be dated to this or any other signing.
What changed hands: no catalogue, and no ownership. On 22 February 2019, at a World Intellectual Property Organization meeting in Praia, the Sociedade Cabo-verdiana de Música signed reciprocal representation contracts with three sister collecting societies: UNAC-SA in Angola, SOMAS in Mozambique and SGA in Guinea-Bissau. Each society appointed the other to license its repertoire in the other’s territory, collect the money and remit it. Nothing was bought, sold or assigned.
The parties
Sociedade Cabo-verdiana de Música (SCM), a cooperative constituted in 2013 and, by its own account, the only Cape Verdean member of CISAC. UNAC-SA, Sociedade de Autores, Angola’s authors’ society, based in Luanda. Sociedade Moçambicana de Autores (SOMAS), Maputo. Sociedade Guineense de Autores (SGA), Bissau. A fourth instrument signed the same day, a memorandum of understanding rather than a contract, involved a São Tomé and Príncipe society that was still being constituted and is not named in any source read for this record.
What the contracts cover
Reciprocal representation, which is a mandate and not a transfer. SCM does not own, acquire or administer the Angolan, Mozambican or Bissau-Guinean repertoire outside Cape Verde, and those three societies acquire no interest in Cape Verdean works outside their own territories. Each is authorised to license the other’s catalogue domestically and to account for it. SCM’s own undated schedule of international agreements records all three of these relationships as reciprocal and limited to public performance rights (execução pública). Mechanical reproduction rights are not recorded against any of the three.
Consideration
Not disclosed. No document read for this record states a fee, advance, commission rate, administration deduction or any other consideration attached to these three contracts, and none states that they were concluded without consideration either. Nothing is asserted in either direction.
What SCM’s own schedule shows
SCM publishes a signed document, “Acordos de representação SCM com entidades internacionais”, listing every international agreement it holds. It records 42 representation agreements with 37 sister societies: 39 reciprocal and 3 unilateral. All 42 cover public performance; 20 of the 42 also cover mechanical rights. By continent, Europe accounts for 17 agreements, Africa 14, the Americas 7 and Asia 4. The schedule’s own total is 30,199,981 works and 1,103,216 rightsholders represented by SCM.
Against the three 2019 counterparties, the schedule records: UNAC (Angola), reciprocal, public performance, 400,000 works and 5,820 rightsholders; SOMAS (Mozambique), reciprocal, public performance, with a figure that reads either as 578 works and 943 rightsholders or as the single number 578,943, the document’s own layout does not resolve which; and SGA (Guinea-Bissau), reciprocal, public performance, with both the works column and the rightsholders column left empty.
Unresolved points
Three, recorded rather than smoothed over. First, the meeting dates conflict: SPA’s account places the meeting in Praia from 19 to 22 February, while WIPO’s own meeting record for WIPO/CCM/RAI/19 gives 21 to 22 February 2019. Second, no source read names the individuals who signed any of the three contracts. Third, SCM’s schedule is undated, carries a city (“Ouagadougou”) in the country column for its Burkinabè counterparty, and leaves one row without an entity name at all, so it cannot be treated as a clean register.
