Private and public sector

Maximum legal certainty for paper reproductions and digital re-use

In our knowledge-based economy, sharing knowledge and information as easily as possible is crucial for the success of companies, liberal professions and public institutions. This sharing of knowledge is still often done on paper (photocopies, prints), but also increasingly in digital format (digital copies, scans, internal network, presentations, …).

With the Reprobel licence, we want to offer an easy and ready-made solution that allows companies, liberal professions and government institutions to share this knowledge with respect for copyright.

The legal exception (reprography remuneration and publisher’s remuneration) is limited to photocopies. This means that for prints, digital reproductions and digital distribution of copyright-protected work, the permission of the rightholder or his collective management organisation is always required. As a company or government institution, you too may have purchased some licence products or subscriptions directly from the rightholder or its collective management organisation (e.g. a licence from License2Publish, Copiepresse, Repro PP or Repropress for digital reuse of press releases, a subscription to a scientific database, etc.).

For that reason Reprobel offers a blanket licence for the private and public sectors. This Reprobel licence is supplementary to your current subscriptions and licences, and does not replace them. However, it ensures that for photocopies, prints and digital re-use of copyrighted work for which you cannot find a solution in the market, you need no further permission from the rightholder and you can start sharing knowledge with legal certainty. Find out more about our digital licence in less than five minutes in this brochure. Read in this article why this licence is needed in the framework of your digitization projects. You can find the answers to frequently asked questions with regard to our combined licence here. You will find all you want to know about copyright, the role of Reprobel and the practical modalities of our licence and your declaration to / agreement with Reprobel in this handy manual.

The terms of our licence can be found here.

Reprobel’s invoice conditions for this licence can be found here.

What is allowed under the Reprobel licence (within the licence limits)?

Photocopying (paper-to-paper) +
Printing (digital-to-paper) +
Scanning (paper-to-digital) +
Digital copying (digital-to-digital, e.g. on a hard disk or USB stick), also for archiving purposes +
Internal communication via your network or via an internal chat function, project management tool, tablet or smartphone with access to the network, … +
External communication in the framework of a customer file or prospectus, in the context of contract negotiations, advice or provision of services or of a legal or judicial obligation. +
Digital presentations (reproduction and communication) as part of your normal professional activities.

What is not allowed under the Reprobel licence?

Suspension or limitation of current licences or subscriptions (concluded with the rightholder or his collective management organisation).
Infringing the existing or future licensing conditions of the rightholders or their collective management organisations (e.g. License2publish, Copiepresse, …).
Reproducing or distributing more than 10% of a book or more than one chapter thereof.
Reproduction or distribution of sheet music (scores).
Publication on your public website and on social media.
Acts with the intention of commercialising source works yourself or carrying out an activity as a publisher or printer.
Acts for commercial advertising purposes (one-to-many).
Acts that reasonably harm the normal commercial exploitation of the source work.
Acts with respect to clearly illegal source works or by which you circumvent a technical or usage restriction or a payment wall.
Text & data mining, press monitoring and other acts with the intention of creating structured databases, overviews or data files yourself.
Translation or editing of source works.
Acts that harm the moral rights of the author(s) of the source work.
Acts without acknowledging the source, unless this is not reasonably possible.
Acts outside the Belgian territory and/or of repertoire not represented by Reprobel.

How much does the Reprobel licence cost?

Private sector

Rate category I: all licensees not falling under Categories II or III.

Rate category II: licensees engaged in a mixed activity in that they provide, in addition to purely physical products or services, an important intellectual service and/or carry out highly innovative professional activities and/or have research centers (e.g. pharmaceutical, banking, insurance and financial services companies, consultants, creative industries, bookkeepers, accountants and auditors, architects and engineers, etc.).

Rate category III: licensees providing exclusively or mainly intellectual services (e.g. lawyers, notaries, …).

Here you will find a comparison of the different tariff formulas for the private sector.

Public sector

Non-centralised payment: EUR 14.5 per administrative or equivalent FTE.

Centralised payment: EUR 13 per administrative or equivalent FTE.

The public sector refers to all Belgian and international public institutions in the broad sense of the word (including autonomous structures) with their head office or establishment on Belgian territory, regardless of the level of competence (international, national, regional or local).

All rates are per reference year and are exclusive of VAT (reduced rate 6%).

More information on rate setting can be found in the Collection and Pricing Rules for this licence product. These rules have been revised beforehand by the Monitoring Department for collective management organisations at the Federal Ministry of Economy in order to guarantee the objectivity of the rates.

The global fee of the combined license is based on a surcharge for prints and for digital reuse on top of the standardized scale for photocopies as approved by Ministerial Decree.

For photocopies of copyrighted works, the standardized fee for companies is 8, 12 or 20 EUR excluding VAT per relevant staff member (employee) in FTE per reference year. The surcharge applied for prints and for digital reuse has been deliberately kept limited for enterprises and public institutions despite the significant extension of the license coverage. This surcharge amounts, for example, to 4 EUR (Cat I) or 5 EUR (Cat II and III) excluding VAT per relevant FTE per reference year for companies. In any case, an administrative basic fee of 25 EUR excluding VAT is also charged to cover the transaction cost of the license. For small companies without staff and with less than 5 FTE, this basic fee is already integrated into the annual flat fee.

Reprobel has concluded dozens of sector agreements with federations in almost all professional sectors. These sector agreements pertain to Reprobel’s combined licence including digital reuse.

There are framework agreements with centralized payment (by the sector federation for all of its members) with, among others: Belgian Brewers (breweries), Federgon (temporary agency work and related sectors), de Orde van Vlaamse Balies (the Flemish Bar Association : lawyers), l’Ordre des Barreaux Francophones et Germanophones (the French/German-speaking Bar association : lawyers), de Nationale Kamer van Gerechtsdeurwaarders (the Belgian national chamber of bailiffs), de Koninklijke Federatie van het Belgisch Notariaat (the Royal Federation of Belgian Notaries), CIB Vlaanderen (real-estate agents), Zorgnet/ Vlaams Welzijnsverbond/Caritas (healthcare institutions), de Nationale Raad van de Orde van Architecten (the National Council of the Order of Architects), FBAA (bus transport), Febelcar (car body works) and Febrabel, FVF and UPCA/BVVM (insurance agents).

There are framework agreements with voluntary affiliation of members with, among others : Febelfin (banks), Assuralia (insurance companies), Essenscia (chemistry and pharmacy), BOBR/CBCR (company auditors), NSZ/SNI (self-employed), Traxio (mobility), Unizo (self-employed), UCM (self-employed), Vlaamse Nieuwsmedia and Lapresse.be (publishers of daily newspapers), Fema (traders of building materials), de Confederatie Bouw (building sector), ASV and Forward Belgium (port logistics), Transport & Logistiek Vlaanderen (transport), Axxon (physiotherapists), Domus Medica (general practitioners), Ergotherapie Vlaanderen (occupational therapists), ITAA (accountants & tax advisors), Boerenbond (agricultural sector), KCLE/CRGE (land surveyors), Fevia (food), Cessoc (sociocultural sector), ORI (engineering and consultancy), APRO-BRK, Belgian Chamber of (experts in works of art), UNPLIB (liberal professions general/French language), Sociare (sociocultural sector) and OkO (sociocultural sector).

For companies and public institutions that still want to declare on a volume basis for their print-outs of copyrighted works – without the important additional license coverage for digital reuse – the page rate is 0.066 EUR VAT exclusive (photocopies: 0.0554 EUR VAT exclusive).

What are the advantages of the Reprobel licence?

Legal certainty and compliance for all your paper and digital acts within the limits of the licence, and for all uses for which you cannot take out a licence directly with the rightholder or its collective management organisation.
No more administratively burdensome volume declarations.
No hassle with listing your reproduction devices, counter readings, percentages of protected work etc.
No risk of legal rate increases, checks or surveys.
Fixed and therefore budgetable fees.
Market-based and objective rates specifically tailored to your sector.
Fair and non-discriminatory rates: similar players pay the same rate (‘level playing field’)
Pay only for relevant employees but licence coverage for all employees within your company or institution.

The legal regulation for photocopies

Companies and government institutions that wish to do so can limit their declaration to photocopies under the legal remuneration scheme instead of the Reprobel licence. It is important to remember that in that case there is no additional cover for prints and for digital re-use, and that they expose themselves to a significant risk of copyright infringement. The legal remuneration scheme for photocopies actually consists of two kinds of remuneration: the ‘reprography remuneration‘ for the benefit of the authors and a parallel ‘legal publisher’s remuneration‘. These remunerations are governed by two Royal Decrees dated March 2017, which were extended for an indefinite period in January 2018. Reprobel collects both remunerations as a one-stop shop and has a legal collection monopoly for this purpose.

A declaration can be standardised on the basis of a rate schedule approved by the Minister in November 2017 (EUR 8, EUR 12 or EUR 20 excluding VAT per relevant employee per year), or on the basis of the annual volume of photocopies of protected works made in the client’s company or institution. For photocopies made for the purposes of documentation centres or press reviews, additional and volume-based declarations are always made.

You must file combined declarations for all entities or branches under your own company number. If you also wish to pay for companies or persons with a different company number, you can enter into an agreement for this with Reprobel.

The annual declaration must be filed with Reprobel within 30 working days after the end of the reference year.

The legal remuneration is not due if you do not own, use or possess a reproduction device (copier or multifunctional printer) in your company or institution or if you do not make photocopies of protected works and publications with it. This must be objectively demonstrated.

Please note that under the legal remuneration scheme an increased page rate applies in case of late, incomplete or incorrect declarations (EUR 0.0846 instead of EUR 0.0554). An expert assessment may also take place, the costs of which may be charged to the debtor in specific cases.

How to pay the fee?

Over 400 large Belgian enterprises (with generally more than 250 employees) have concluded a group licensing agreement with Reprobel, that includes digital reuse of copyrighted works. This agreement is user-friendly and replaces the individual declarations through the online portal for all enterprises within the group. If you are a large enterprise and you wish to enter into a Reprobel licensing agreement or if you wish to prolong / extend a current agreement, you can easily do so by contacting the customer service department (contrats@reprobel.be).

If you only wish to fulfil your obligations under the legal remuneration scheme (photocopies) and/or file a declaration for prints (combined with photocopies), you can file a declaration on the online portal that Reprobel has developed for this purpose. You can also download and pay your invoice on the portal. If you wish, you can file a declaration using a paper declaration form. Reprobel can send it to you by post.

In principle, you will be contacted directly by Reprobel in connection with your agreement or declaration. If this is not or no longer the case, please contact Reprobel to make sure.

Copy shops

If you own a copy shop, you must legally pay an annual REPROBEL fee.

You pay the fee for the photocopies (legal license) and printouts (additional license) of protected works that are made by or on behalf of the users in your copy shop.

You pay the fee on the basis of a specific contractual offer from REPROBEL.

In this document, you first identify your company and then map out your reproduction device fleet in detail per reference year.

You can pay the REPROBEL fee in a centralized way for all your branches (with or without a separate company number).

You pay the fee on the basis of your net volume of paper reproductions of protected works in the reference year (per page rate: 0.0554 EUR excluding VAT). Smaller copy shops (copy shops that have less than 5 copiers or multifunctional devices per company number) can also opt for a standardized annual fee per reproduction device.

You return the contractual offer to REPROBEL by e-mail or letter in a timely manner, correctly and fully completed and signed.

Legal sanctions apply for late or incorrect declarations.

If REPROBEL accepts the contractual offer, it will invoice you on the basis of this offer (subject to its statutory controlling rights).

For all questions regarding the REPROBEL license for copy shops, please contact Mrs. Aymée Léonard (copyshop@reprobel.be).

Reprobel launches a new label for copy shops and thanks the copy shop operators for respecting copyright law

For the first time Reprobel awarded a new label to copy shops that fully comply with copyright law on 19^th October 2021. With this action, Reprobel wants to reward copy shops that submit their declarations correctly and pay the corresponding copyright fee. These copy shops are are presented with a bouquet of flowers as thanks by Reprobel and receive a sticker that they can display on their door or window, to show their customers that they respect the rights of authors and publishers and contribute to the creative sector in Belgium.

Click on the sticker to listen to the broadcast on RTBf/Vivacité

(From the 9th minute onwards)

“Copy shops play an important role when it comes to copying and reusing protected works. Therefore it’s also perfectly logical that we also do our part.”

With this positive action and the “This copy shop respects copyright” sticker, Reprobel wants to make the sector take responsibilityand inform them on the subject. It does so by means of a label that shows that the copy shop fulfills its legal obligations, respects copyright and makes a reasonable contribution to the preservation and development of the creative and information sector in Belgium. In this way, Reprobel hopes to raise awareness of copyright and related legal obligations throughout the entire sector, to ensure that as many copy shops as possible actually comply with these obligations, and to achieve greater consistency in declarations (e.g. through a standardized fee per device). For the conscious consumer the sticker is an honest and reliable label that guarantees a correct remuneration to the authors and publishers whose works customers want to photocopy or print out in the copy shop.

The positive action by Reprobel towards copy shops that respect copyright law, was covered by the TV show “ On n’est pas des pigeons ” on RTBF. #Aheartforcopyright