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Copyright, Collecting Societies and Contracts: Collecting Societies in Media & Entertainment Training Course

Understanding the legalities of creative arts industries

Lunch & Learn

This course explores the role of collecting societies in the TV, film, and music industries, covering copyright, licensing, and rights management.

17 October 2025 »
from £175

Need help?  Enrol/reserve

Part of Lunch & Learn: Copyright, Collecting Societies and Contracts series:

What is Lunch & Learn? Turn your lunch hour into a valuable learning opportunity with our all-new Lunch & Learn category – an exciting twist on the traditional webinar, starting in 2025. These bite-sized, budget-friendly and diverse training sessions are designed to fit seamlessly into your working day, providing a flexible and impactful way to advance your skills without disrupting your busy schedule.

If you’re looking to boost your professional expertise, our Lunch & Learn courses combine the latest insights, expert-led instruction, and practical tools to keep you engaged and evolving — all in the time it takes to enjoy your lunch!

So, what are you waiting for? Learn something new, grow your career, and make every minute count.

From £99! Our Lunch & Learn short courses start from just £99 (early booking price) when you book 5 or more places - any combination of multiple courses for one attendee, or multiple attendees on the same course.

Overview

This exciting session provides an in-depth look at the role of collecting societies in the media and entertainment industries. Led by expert lawyer Mark Weston, the course will cover what rights are subject to licensing, what collecting societies do and performers' rights. In the second lunchtime session Copyrights, Collecting Societies and Contracts: Understanding the legalities of music, film, TV and other media, attendees will gain valuable insights into how these societies operate and how both creatives and businesses can navigate the licensing landscape effectively.

This training course is part of our Commercial & Business Law Training Course collection which has been designed for the in-house lawyer.

Benefits of attending

  • Understand the role of collecting societies in managing copyright and performers’ rights
  • Learn about the key collecting societies in the media and entertainment sector
  • Gain insights into the structure and regulation of collecting societies
  • Discover how rights are collectively licensed and where gaps exist
  • Explore licensing opportunities and revenue streams for content creators

Who should attend?

  • Lawyers, legal professionals and rights management experts specialising in intellectual property, but looking to work more specifically in the media area
  • Publishers, broadcasters and distributors needing an overview or refresher
  • Musicians (performers, producers and songwriters), filmmakers and TV producers wanting a clearer understanding of the legal side of the media and entertainment industries

Enrol/reserve

This course will cover:

TV/Film and music: rights subject and not subject to collective licensing

  • Copyright
  • Performers’ rights
  • Rights not covered

Collecting societies

  • What they are
  • What they do
  • How they are structured
  • Regulation

Collecting societies for TV/Film

  • Background
  • MPLC: Motion Picture Licensing Company
  • Filmbankmedia
  • BFI
  • PPL
  • PRS for Music
  • MCPS: Mechanical Copyright Protection Society
  • VPL: Video Performance Limited
  • Directors UK
  • CCLI: Christian Copyright Licensing International
  • ERA: Educational Recording Agency

Collecting societies for music

  • Mechanical rights
  • Sync rights
  • PPL PRS Limited
  • Administration: PPL and PRS for Music rights
  • PPL: Phonographic Performance Limited
  • PRS for Music
  • Eos
  • MCPS
  • Soundreef
  • RadioPro
  • IMPEL: Independent Music Publishers’ E-Licensing
  • CreaCollect
  • MERLIN: Music and Entertainment Rights Licensing Independent Network
  • CCLI

Performers and BECS: British Equity Collecting Society

Enrol/reserve

Mark Weston
Sederby Consulting Limited

Mark Weston has run his own law firm, Weston Legal, since 1 January 2024. He is also a consultant at Hill Dickinson LLP where he joined in February 2016 as a partner and Head of its Commercial, TMT & IP Practice. Before that, he was a partner and Head of the Commercial/IP/IT Team at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP and before that, he spent several years at Baker & McKenzie in London and Chicago and has also previously been seconded to Hewlett Packard and other technology businesses. He changed role to become a consultant in Hill Dickinson’s London office in January 2024.

Expertise: Mark’s practice covers both non-contentious and contentious matters in all areas of commercial law, intellectual property law, information technology law, Internet, electronic commerce and on-line services law. He specialises in commercial and Tech issues. Mark is used as a ‘trusted adviser’ by many clients in all sorts of businesses and often acts as ‘private practice in-house counsel’ for many clients. He specialises in tech and internet businesses.

Clients: Just some of Mark’s more well-known clients include Elstree Film Studios, RTL Group S.A., Sykes Cottages, Retailcorp Brands LLC, The Gulf Marketing Group, Moneynetint Limited and the BBC.

Some detail: Mark has extensive experience in advising clients on all manner of commercial matters (such as business planning and solutions, franchising, distribution, agency and marketing) through branding and intellectual property exploitation and licensing, to advice and documentation regarding hardware and software issues (such as development, licensing, maintenance and distribution, SaaS and cloud, Internet transactional solutioning, B2B, B2C and B2G electronic commerce, S-commerce and M-Commerce, social media, outsourcing, facilities management, procurement, IT policies, data protection (privacy), GDPR and freedom of information issues as well as artificial intelligence (AI)). He has a particular expertise in new digital business and revenue streams. He is also experienced in dealing with software disputes and IT litigation. The increasingly extensive media side of his practice relates primarily to publishing (both real world and digital content), to games and gaming platforms (and particularly transmedia technologies), advising companies about their advertising onscreen, online and in print and managing their public communications strategies generally (dealing with the CMA and ASA in the process) – and also a smattering of television, film and music exploitation. Recently he has been very active in AI advice.

More unusual: 

Mark has previously spent several months on secondment to Hewlett Packard and he has also been seconded to assist in the legal problems arising in new technology companies such as Symbian. From 2000 to 2001, Mark was resident in the Chicago office of Baker & McKenzie advising US clients on European and UK aspects of IT and electronic commerce law and practice.

Mark is the author of the Legal Practice Companion, a parallel text book used at several law schools, the editor of the IP and Media Law Companion as well as the rest of the Companion series of books published by Bloomsbury Professional, Tottels, Cavendish Publishing and Oxford University Press. He has noted numerous reports for the IT Law Reports and is widely published in Computing, Computers & Law, Computer Law & Security Report, IT Law Today, Intellectual Property World, Solicitors Journal and many other journals both online and offline. Mark has also authored articles syndicated in the national and trade press and is regularly quoted in national newspapers and is heard on radio as an expert in his fields. Mark is the author of the Business Names on the Internet chapter in the PLC Ecommerce Manual as well as numerous other articles on various Commercial & IT law topics.

Mark lectures regularly on all Commercial, IP and IT law topics, including at the IBC IT ‘Summer School’ Programme in Cambridge, England; the Falconbury and MBL two-day and three-day Commercial Contracts seminars (run several times a year) and IT Contracts seminars (run three times a year) in London; and he has previously lectured at the Annual On-line & Internet Commerce Law Institute seminar in Chicago and tutored at University College London.  He also runs a programme of bespoke training schemes on commercial law, IP law, IT law, AI law and data law as well as soft skills programmes such as negotiation skills and presentation skills.

Finally, you may have seen that Mark likes blogging and writing books, which are available at all good bookshops! He also appears regularly on BBC1 (usually providing advice on-screen to BBC Watchdog) and also on Sky News as a legal commentator, as well as trying to avoid the huge quantity of pink powder the TV make-up girls want to apply to his increasingly receding hairline.

More details

17 October 2025

Lunch & Learn

Live online

12:00-13:30 UK (London) (UTC+01)
13:00-14:30 Paris (UTC+02)
07:00-08:30 New York (UTC-04)
Course code 16658

  • GBP 175 200
  • EUR 245 280
  • USD 280 320

Until 10 Oct

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* Early booking discounts may not be combined with other discounts or offers. As such, the discounts for 2nd/3rd/4th delegates are based on the full price; and apply only when booking multiple delegates on the same date.

Multiple colleagues? See above for details of our discounts for 2, 3, or 4 delegates. For more, talk to one of our training experts to discuss how to:

Run this course conveniently and cost-effectively in-house for your staff and colleagues

Aleksandra Beer

Aleksandra BEER
Training expert

Yesim Nurko

Yesim NURKO
Training expert

+44 (0)20 7749 4749

inhouse@ipiacademy.com