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On 12 December 2012, the President of the Republic of Bulgaria vetoed a bill amending the Investment Encouragement Act (IEA). This bill provided a.o. that any investment into objects of intellectual property according to the Bulgarian Copyright Act could be awarded public aid if the budget foresees an expenditure of more than BGN 400,000 (approximately EUR 200,000) in Bulgaria. As a result of the presidential veto, the bill was rejected by the Bulgarian Parliament with the argument that the criteria for encouraging investment in intellectual property had to be in conformity with the not yet adopted...

Several amendments have been made during the months of March and April 2013 to different acts pertaining to the Bulgarian Media Law. An amendment and a supplement to the Electronic Communications Act (ECA) introduced a new Art. 231 (published on 15 March 2013 in the "Official Gazette", issue 27). The purpose of this provision is the protection of the rights of media consumers, especially in the case of commercial disputes between television broadcasters and network operators. Therefore, Art. 231 envisages that the contract between the consumer and the network operator has to outline a detailed...

On 6 February 2013, the stakeholders in the television advertising industry - advertisers, communication agencies, and providers of audiovisual media services - adopted a common standard for the regulation of loudness in advertising on the basis of a Общо споразумение (self-regulatory General Agreement). The application of the standard will ensure the balance of separate elements of television programmes. This addresses frequent consumer complaints about drastic differences in sound levels especially between the audiovisual advertising and other programme elements. The standard has been elaborated...

In a controversial judgment, with a 4/3 decision, the European Court of Human Rights dismissed the claim by a journalist, Ms. Nenkova-Lalova, regarding her dismissal from the Bulgarian public broadcaster BNR. The BNR journalist complained that her disciplinary dismissal, ostensibly on technical grounds regarding the way she had hosted one of her regular weekly radio shows, had in reality been a sanction for the way in which she had exposed corrupt practices during one of her radio shows. In that talk show unpleasant facts were revealed about the then ruling political party. However, as Nenkova-Lalova...

On 18 January 2013, after having consulted with the Bulgarian Drug Agency (BDA), the media authority Съвет за електронни медии (Council for Electronic Media - СЕМ) published a position on the sponsorship of media services by manufacturers or sellers of medicinal products. The CEM asked the BDA for an interpretation of a relevant provision of the Medicinal Products in Human Medicine Act (MPHMA). According to Article 244 para. (1) MPHMA, an advertisement of medicinal products is any form of information, presentation, promotion or offer with the aim of encouraging the prescription, sale or use of...