¹ When appointing members of the Federal Arbitration Board for the Management of Copyright and Neighboring Rights (Arbitration Board), the Federal Council shall ensure that it is composed in a balanced manner and represents Equitably the communities concerned, the four linguistic communities, the regions of the country and the two sexes.

² The Federal Council appoints the Chairman, the assessors and their alternates as well as the other members. The Vice-Chair is selected from among the assessors.

³ The Federal Department of Justice and Police (Department) publishes in the Federal Worksheet the names, names and addresses of the members appointed for the first time.

⁴ The department submits proposals to the Federal Council for appointments and administrative matters within its jurisdiction.

¹ The term of office, the procedure for the resignation and the calculation of the allowances of the members of the Arbitration Board shall be settled by the order of 3 June 1996 on the committees ¹ . ²

² The members of the Arbitration Board shall be subject to the secrecy of the function.

¹ The Administrative Directorate of the Arbitration Board shall be the responsibility of the President. In the event of incapacity, he shall be replaced by the Vice-President.

² The secretariat may be required to assist in this task (art. 4).

¹ The Department shall appoint the secretariat of the Arbitration Board with the Chairman of the Arbitration Board; the Secretariat shall be headed by a Secretary-Legal Officer. The Department shall make available to the Arbitration Board the necessary infrastructure. ¹

^1bis Staff working reports of the Secretariat shall be governed by the laws on the personnel of the Confederation. ²

² In carrying out its functions, the Secretariat shall be independent of the administrative authorities and shall be bound only with the instructions of the President.

³ In particular, the Secretary-Legal Officer performs the following tasks:

A.

Drafting decisions, observations and communications to the parties and to the authorities;

B.

Record keeping;

C.

Management of documentation, information of the Arbitration Board, and editorial updating of decisions for publication.

⁴ The Secretary-Legal Officer has a consultative role in the proceedings of which he holds the minutes.

¹ The Arbitration Board shall publish its decisions in principle in official or unofficial bodies which disseminate information on the administration of justice by the administrative court.

² It may publish its decisions in a database on its website.

The Arbitration Board is based in Berne.

From an accounting point of view, the Arbitration Board is considered an administrative unit of the Department. The revenue and expenditure of the committee is recorded in the budget; in expenditure, staff costs and equipment costs are dealt with in two separate headings.

¹ At the request for approval of a tariff, the collecting societies shall file the required documents and a brief description of the conduct of the negotiations with the representative associations of users (Art. 46, para. 2, LDA).

² Applications for approval of a new tariff must be submitted to the Arbitration Board at least seven months prior to the expected entry into force of the tariff. The President may derogate from that time limit in the case of substantiated cases.

³ If the negotiations have not been conducted with due care, the President may refer the documents by setting an additional time limit.

¹ The President shall open the approval procedure by designating, in accordance with Art. 57 LDA, members of the Chamber of Arbitration and circulating among them copies of applications with annexes and other possible documents.

² The President shall submit the request for approval of a tariff to the representative associations of the users who participate in the negotiations with the management companies and shall fix a fair period of time for them to inform them, in writing, of their Observations.

³ If it is clear from the request for approval that negotiations with representative associations of users (Art. 46, para. 2, LDA) have resulted in an agreement, it is not necessary to request comments.

Decisions shall be made by way of circulation provided that the representative associations of users have accepted the tariff and that no request for a meeting has been made by a member of the Arbitration Chamber; Incidental decisions are rendered by way of traffic.

¹ The President shall fix the date of the sitting, convene the members of the Arbitration Chamber and shall, in due course, communicate the date of the meeting to the collecting societies and to the associations of the users participating in the proceedings.

² As a general rule, the meetings are held at the headquarters of the Arbitration Board (art. 6).

The parties have the right to be heard orally.

¹ When the hearing does not lead to an agreement between the parties, the Chamber shall immediately release the hearing.

² The deliberations and final vote shall take place in the absence of the parties.

³ When there is equality of votes, the President shall decide.

¹ Where the Board finds that a tariff or certain provisions of a tariff cannot be approved, it then gives the management company an opportunity to amend its tariff proposal before making its decision, in such a way that Approval is possible.

² If the management company does not make use of this possibility, the Arbitration Chamber may then make the necessary changes itself (Art. 59, para. 2, LDA).

¹ The President shall notify the decision orally at the end of the sitting or in writing in the operative part. ¹

² It shall freely examine and approve the written statement of reasons for the decision; if editorial questions arise, they may be submitted to the other members of the Arbitration Chamber by way of circulation. ²

³ Notification of the reasoned decision in writing shall be decisive for the commencement of the appeal period. ³

⁴ The members of the Arbitration Chamber as well as the Secretary-Legal Officer must be mentioned by name; the signature of the Secretary-Legal Officer is next to that of the President.

¹ Art. 1, let. A, 2 and 14 to 18 of the order of 10 September 1969 on costs and allowances in administrative proceedings ¹ Apply by analogy to fees for the examination and approval of tariffs of collective societies (art. 55 to 60 LDA).

² Disbursements from the Arbitration Board are billed separately. These include:

A.

Per diems and other allowances;

B.

Costs incurred in the administration of evidence, scientific investigations, special examinations and obtaining the necessary information and parts;

C.

The costs incurred by the work of the Arbitration Board by third parties;

D.

Transmission and communication costs.

¹ The management company submitting the tariff for approval pays the taxes and disbursements.

² Where a number of management companies are required to pay the same fees, they shall jointly and severally reply to them.

³ In cases where this appears to be justified, the Arbitration Board may require the representative associations of the users participating in the proceedings to pay part of the costs.

Fees and disbursements shall be payable upon notification of the reasoned decision in writing.

To the extent that this order does not contain any particular rule, the provisions of the General Order of 8 September 2004 on emoluments ¹ Are applicable.