he issue of royalties for authoring and invention is a newly emerged phenomenon that is recently brought up in legal circles worldwide, and the governments are facing challenges in devising lasting regulations for designating the relation between producers and consumers of intangible and cultural products. Since its advent, Islam has fortunately solved this problem by presenting logical and equitable executive approaches. With a glance at the background and the history of royalties in western countries, Iran, and the Islamic culture and after defining scientific circumstances of legal examination of current problems, the writer of the present paper has attempted to introduce both positive and negative viewpoints of Muslim lawyers and jurists, whether Sunni and Shi’ite, on the issue of royalties. Having narrated and criticized the opinions and proofs of the proponents and opponents, the writer eventually concludes – in view of legal decisions (fatwās) of the contemporary authorities, particularly Imam Khomeini (ra) – that the prevailing royalty is not among external and tangible objects. Similarly, the right to appropriate and regard it as property is viewed as suspicious by the majority of jurists and the permission to sell it to the publishers in forms of legal sale would be problematic and requires further deliberation. However, there is no restriction for bequeathing and transferring material and intangible rights of such cultural products as books, cassettes, CD’s, and software programs, in terms of legal compromise and mutual settlement. As asserted by some contemporary jurists including Imam Khomeini (ra), the solution to this problem must be sought in the conditions of contract required for allocating copyrights for the publishers and the authors when providing such cultural products for sale.
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