Spain

[ES] Constitution of the Intersectoral Commission against Offences of Intellectual Property Rights

IRIS 2006-1:1/20

Cristina Troya

Enrich Advocats - Copyr@it, Barcelona

The Spanish Intersectoral Commission against offences of intellectual property rights, which was called into life last October by Royal Decree1228/2005 (see IRIS 2005-10: 12),was definitively set upon 23 November. The ceremony marking its constitution took place at the National Library and was presided by the Spanish Minister of Culture.

The creation of this Commission is one of the measures announced by the Spanish Government's Integral Plan against Piracy (see IRIS 2005-6: 12), and its objective, among others, is theoperational coordination between the Public Administrations and the different organizations defending intellectual property rights.

The Commission is composed by the following 38 members:

- Representatives of the 11 ministries participating in the Plan;

- 3 representatives of the Autonomous Communities Governments;

- 1 municipal representative of the city of Madrid;

- 1 municipal representative of the city of Barcelona;

- 1 representative of the Spanish federation of provinces and municipal entities;

- 1 representative of the Board of consumers;

- 8 representatives of collecting societies;

- 5 representatives of the communications and information technology industries;

- 2 representatives of intellectual property associations;

- 1 corporate representative.

The Plenary Assembly of the Commission shall take place once a year and the Permanent Commission shall have at least three meetings per year. The President of the Plenary Assembly is the Minister of Justice Carmen Calvo and the Secretary is Pedro Colmenares, Deputy General Manager of Intellectual Property.

Since the approval of the Plan, the Government has already carried out some of the scheduled actions, such as the signatureof an agreementby the Ministry of Culture with theSpanish federation of provinces and municipal entities (FEMP) concerning the respect of intellectual property rights. The Ministry will finance part of the Intellectual Property Information Service for all the municipalities.

The objective of this Information Service is to establish a permanent instrument of information and communication with the municipalities. In addition, training programmes for the employees of the administration will be set up.