Manufacturers & Importers

The obligation to pay remuneration pertaining to manufacturers of products subject to remunerations is derived from §54 (1) UrhG; the royalty payment obligation of importers is found in § 54b (1) UrhG. Importers, manufacturers and traders bear joint responsibility for such payments.

In accordance with §§54e (1), 54h (1) UrhG, importers are required by law to report the type and quantity of imported devices and storage media to ZPÜ. ZPÜ is the joint receiving office as defined by § 54b (3) UrhG.

Such information is to be reported in writing by the tenth day of the month following the previous calendar month. According to current practice, ZPÜ requires notifications under § 54e (1) UrhG along with those under § 54f (1) UrhG to be submitted for each calendar quarter. ZPÜ reserves the right to change this practice with future effect at any time.

Pursuant to §54f in conjunction with. §§54 (1), 54b (1), 54h (1) UrhG, companies obligated to pay the remuneration, including manufacturers and importers, must inform ZPÜ upon request of the type and quantity of hardware and storage media they have sold or put into circulation on the German market.

You will find your customer number, for example, on the last payment request you received from us.

If you do not know a customer number, e.g. because this is your first communication with ZPÜ, simply leave the field blank - we will assign a customer number and notify you of it.

Please be sure to use the correct form.

For the exact definitions, of the products covered by the tariff, please refer to the product detail pages or the tariff (can be found in the downloadcenter).

Please make sure to use the form for the correct period. Please refer to the downloadcenter for the most current reporting forms.

Please fill out the cover sheet completely, indicating your company, the date and the person responsible for providing the information.

Please enter a specific contact person, including contact addresses AND telephone number. This will improve the processing of the form in case of queries on our part.

If you are using the form to report multiple quarters, please mark this clearly.

Please note the information on third party exports (see footnotes of the forms) in particular also regarding the required evidence. At this point, only third party exports and no own exports are deductible.

Using the Excel form provided, the calculation of the quantity of products subject to remuneration (after deduction of third party exports, etc.), as well as the remuneration amount is carried out automatically. If you want to report based on IDC data, the correct calculation of the quantity of private and business products based on the IDC quota is also carried out automatically.

Please only include products that have been put on the market in your information report; this also includes products that have been put on the market free of charge. Stock goods do not have to be reported within the scope of information (§54f UrhG). Please do not include in your information any products that are not subject to remuneration, such as cell phone cases, laptop cases or accessories.

If you are an importer and use the form to issue an import notification pursuant to Section 54e UrhG, please make this clear on the cover sheet of the form.

For detailed information on how to provide evidence for business products, please refer to the respective tariffs. For cell phones, for example, the description of evidence can be found in Section D. I. 1. “Ermittlung der Anzahl der Business-Mobiltelefone auf der Grundlage der tatsächlichen Verkäufe“ (determining the number of business cell phones based on actual sales).

Please submit evidence for specified business products, such as

• information on the invoice number and date;
• type and number of units of the business products covered by the invoice,
• Information on direct or project transactions,
• company name and address of the end customer (also in the case of a project transaction),
• VAT ID of the end customer (only for natural persons),
• Information on the address of the contractual partner (in the case of a project transaction) as well as,
• required end customer confirmations

together with the information form.

If you are reporting a product for which there are both options, either to to report the number of business products by IDC quota or to report the number of business products by evidence, please be careful which form, or section of the form, you complete.

Please complete only one section (“ Aufteilung in Verbraucher- und Business-Mobiltelefone auf der Grundlage von IDC-Daten” (Split into consumer and business handsets based on IDC data) OR „Aufteilung in Verbraucher- und Business-Mobiltelefone auf der Grundlage eines Nachweises“ (Split into consumer and business handsets based on evidence) per brand.

If you want to use the possibility to report according to IDC quota, please let us know. We will inform you about the quotas of the corresponding brands. Information on the IDC quota can be found at in the section "Products&Tariffs", as well as in the FAQs.

Alternatively, you can omit the IDC quota information - we will take into account the appropriate quota for the respective brand when billing.

Since the IDC quota for the current year is not yet available at the reporting/information period, the calculation is initially based on the previous year's quota. The previous year's quota is initially multiplied by 0.9 for this purpose. As soon as the actual quota is available, the settlements are corrected as part of the “IDC Ausgleich” (IDC adjustment). In the example shown, the quota used for the calculation of private and business products is therefore 18% (20%*0.9).

If you want to report the number of business products (here using cell phones as an example) based on IDC data, please be sure to fill out a separate form for each brand, as the quota only applies to one brand at a time