Licensing & Rights Management

Here is the breakdown. Rights clearance for shoots filming or releasing in China runs through the Copyright Law of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国著作权法). The Trademark Law, with music sync and master clearances funneled through the Music Copyright Society of China (MCSC / 中国音乐著作权协会) and audio-visual rights administered alongside the China Audio-Video Copyright Association (CAVCA). The China Film Administration under NRTA also reviews chain-of-title and content rights as part of the foreign production approval and CFCC co-production application process — meaning licensing is not a downstream legal task but an upstream gating step that lives next to permit prep.

Here is how this works in practice. Beijing and Shanghai entertainment law firms specializing in Chinese IP routinely work with our coordinators to align Western publisher catalogs (Sony Music Publishing, Universal, Warner Chappell) with their MCSC counterparts so a sync used worldwide clears for Chinese theatrical, streaming on iQIYI, Youku, or Tencent Video, and broadcast on CCTV and provincial satellite channels.

Here is what that looks like on the ground. Our planning model maps your rights needs against the areas and platforms your release plan touches, then runs research, deal-making, and forms in parallel rather than serial. Music clearances move through MCSC for performance rights and direct publisher deal-making for sync, with master recordings handled separately through the relevant labels — a process that takes longer than Western markets but follows a predictable workflow once started early.

Here is how the picture comes together. The picture on the ground is more specific. Footage rights, including archival from China Central Newsreel, CCTV libraries, and provincial TV networks, are bargained with the source institutions. Trademark and brand clearances pass through the State Intellectual Property Office (CNIPA) for any product placement subject to scrutiny. We deliver organized rights bundles with bilingual contracts compliant with PRC Copyright Law, the bilingual cue sheets MCSC needs, and the chain-of-title forms NRTA and CFCC expect during the foreign production review — mostly lifting licensing revenue by around thirty percent through strategic area structuring across our slate.