I.- INTRODUCTION.

On Friday 22nd March 2013 the Cabinet of Spain passed the Draft Bill for the modification of the Intellectual Property Act and Spanish Civil Procedure Act.

II.-  PRINCIPAL MODIFICATIONS.

The main measures intended to be introduced by said draft bill may be divided into four blocks:

a)     Implementation of EU Directive 2011/77/UE in Spanish legislation, by virtue of which the term of protection of the rights of artists or performers and the producers of phonograms shall be extended from 50 to 70 years.

b)     Restriction of the legal concept of “private copy”, which shall be limited to reproductions carried out by individuals for their private use from an original (CD, DVD,…) acquired via commercial sale.

c)     Design of new supervision mechanisms of the intellectual property rights collective management organisations:

  • Possibility of removing government organs and of temporary intervention in collective management organisations who default on their legal obligations.
  • Precision and hardening of the distribution, prescription and payment conditions of the rights collected by the collective management organisations.
  • Enlargement of the catalogue of obligations of the collective management organisations, and establishment of infringements and sanctions which allow administrative responsibilities to be demanded from them for default on their legal obligations.
  • Reinforcement of the functions of the First Section of the Intellectual Property Commission, granting it competence for regulatory actions and establishing tariffs.

d)     Improvement in the protection of intellectual property rights in the Internet:

  • Extension of the faculties of the Second Section of the Intellectual Property Commission:
    1. Included in its sphere of action are websites whose principal activity is to offer links to contents which are “notoriously offered illicitly”. Search engines such as Google are excluded.
    2. Creation of a notice board for electronic edicts, which shall have full effects globally for the purposes of notification.
    3. Faculty for imposing economic sanctions of between 30.000 y 300.000 Euro in the case of repeated breach of the requirements to withdraw illicit content from websites.
  • Modification of the Spanish Civil Procedure Act in order to be able to, as preliminary proceedings before filing a lawsuit, apply for the identification details of a website allegedly infringing intellectual or industrial property rights.

III.- CONCLUSION.

The draft bill shall now start the advisory phase before initiating parliamentary processing. The definitive text of the new law is expected to be passed towards the end of 2013.

 

 

Vilá Abogados

 

For more information, please contact:

va@vila.es

 

3rd of April 2013