Licensing & Rights Management

Rights clearance for productions 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) and 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 internationally clears for Chinese theatrical, streaming on iQIYI, Youku, or Tencent Video, and broadcast on CCTV and provincial satellite channels.

Our coordination model maps your rights requirements against the territories and platforms your release plan touches, then runs research, negotiation, and paperwork in parallel rather than serial. Music clearances move through MCSC for performance rights and direct publisher negotiation 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.

The picture on the ground is more specific. Footage rights, including archival from China Central Newsreel, CCTV libraries, and provincial broadcasters, 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 packages with bilingual contracts compliant with PRC Copyright Law, the bilingual cue sheets MCSC needs, and the chain-of-title paperwork NRTA and CFCC expect during the foreign production review — typically lifting licensing revenue by around thirty percent through strategic territory structuring across our slate.