Our business - Tekstognode

No matter the type of written work – Danish or foreign, printed or digital – they are all protected by copyright, and in our copying agreements we represent all types of text and sheet music material.

Copydan Writing is a collective management organisation that manages the rights of authors and publishers in connection with copying:

We were established in 1980 by the rightsholders.
We are owned by those who write and publish texts and sheet music. Our board consists of 14 Danish publishers’ organisations, writers’ associations, journalists’ associations, illustrators and music organisations.
We are approved by the Danish Ministry of Culture to enter into copying agreements on behalf of both authors and publishers. Our agreements are based within the legal framework of the Danish Copyright Act.
Our agreements and licenses cover copying of text material when used by the professional Denmark – we meet the copy needs for schools, educations, churches, choirs, institutions, companies and public events.
We are non-profit. We distribute the money from the copying agreements to those who have created the writtens works that have been copied. We are thus part of an important cultural circuit that ensures the creation of new texts and sheet music.
We are one of the leading experts in distributing remuneration individually.
In 2023, 96.7 % of all funds were distributed individually and directly to the rightsholders. The rest was distributed collectively to our member organisations.
In 2024, we will distribute DKK 490.6 million to over 74,000 Danish and foreign rightsholders.
We are a member of IFRRO and have a strong history of collaborating with international sister organisations, which ensure payment when Danish works are copied and used abroad – and vice versa.
We enter into partnerships with libraries, publishing houses, institutions etc. that request our help in clearing the rights in large scale digitization projects meant for online platforms.

What to know more…?

Common to all our rightsholders is the fact that they all write, publish or in some other way contribute to the creation of text and sheet music material – or are the heirs of someone who did.

Copydan Writing operates with three types of rightsholders:

Authors: those who contribute to the works, i.a. authors, journalists, composers, translators, illustrators and photographers.
Publishers: those who publish the works, i.a. publishing houses, newspaper publishers, public institutions, businesses and digital platform providers.
Heirs: the heirs of an author. The copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the rightsholder.

: Our customers are typically schools, educational institutions and businesses as well as public institutions and authorities.

Our agreements enable them to make copies legally. This provides a more flexible and adaptable flow for educations and businesses alike, as it allows the showing, distribution and digital sharing of copies with pupils, students and colleagues.

Among our customers are also libraries, publishing houses, institutions etc.
We help clear the rights for them in connection with large scale projects that involve making a large volume of texts or sheet music available to the public online.

Close cooperation with customers
We make regular surveys of the level of copying carried out by our various customers. We do this to make sure that the individual agreement always matches the customer’s requirements and to make sure that the prices we charge our customers match the actual copying.

We always carry out the surveys in close cooperation with our customers, which are typically the representative trade- and interest organisations.

Every year Copydan writing distributes remuneration to the rightsholders.

Generally, we distribute remuneration two times a year:

Distribution in the educational area plus in the church/parish area
Distribution for examination papers.

We apply individual distribution principles when distributing remuneration to the rightsholders, reflecting the actual use of their works. The funds we collect with our copying agreements go directly to the people who have written and published the copied material.

96.7% of all remunerations in 2023 were distributed individually.

When we do distribute remuneration collectively, we either perform a re-distribution by employing knowledge from another similar area, or we hand over the funds to our member organisations which then handle the distribution by using the funds for a number of purposes relevant to our management area.

Read about distribution in our policies

About individual distribution
Every year, several schools and educational institutions at various educational levels are asked to help us identify what works they copy from and how much they copy. They report back to us for an entire school year.

Churches / parishes also report back to us on their copying for a period of 3-4 weeks – they do so several times a year.

This way we obtain information about the number of pages copied and the number of copies made of a particular material. We register all the information we receive in our database.

Our team of librarians and researchers then review all the copies that our customers provide us with and make a note of author, publisher, composer, illustrator etc. for each page. This means that all the different rightsholders that have contributed to a particular page receive remuneration.

Distribution principles
Remuneration is distributed based on the number of pages and copies reported. We also have a number of distribution principles decided by our Board.

A certain factor is applied to certain genres and media. A factor of 5 is applied to poetry, music and song lyrics. This means that one single page of e.g. a poem is multiplied by 5 when we register information about the copy. Thus, 1 copied page of e.g. a poem counts as 5 copied pages when we calculate the remuneration. Similarly, a factor of 3 is applied to analogue copies of newspapers.

Remuneration is divided equally 50/50 between authors and publishers. Illustrators, photographers and other pictorial authors receive a share of the authors’ remuneration.

From June 2022, a turnover requirement has been introduced for Danish publishers only, meaning that in order to receive remuneration they must be able to document relevant income in their publishing business.

Do we owe remuneration?
We continuously register new works and new rightsholders who subsequently receive remuneration for copying.

We spend a lot of time trying to find all the new rightsholders, and though we find many there are some every year we cannot seem to find.

For instance, because their contact details are not public or because we cannot unambiguously identify the rightsholder. If the rightsholder in question has an ordinary name, doubt may arise as to which “John Johnson” wrote a certain text.

Do you believe that your text has been copied and have you not heard from us? Please contact us at kontakt@tekstognode.dk with your inquiry.

Approved by the Danish Ministry of Culture

As the only organisation in Denmark, we have been authorised by the Danish Ministry of Culture to conclude agreements under the extended collective licensing system in the text and sheet music area for both authors and publishers.

The extended collective licensing system is a regulatory way of managing copyrights that ensures flexible access to copying for the users and compensation for the rightsholders for use of their material.

Read the authorisation by the Danish Ministry of Culture here (in Danish)

Further information

Call: (+45) 3544 1493
Write: kontakt@tekstognode.dk

What to know more…?

Who are our rightsholders?

Who are our customers and partners?

How do we distribute remuneration?

Approved by the Danish Ministry of Culture

Further information