Search results : 344

On 4 December 2014, the Parliament of Catalonia adopted a new law creating a tax on content provision by the providers of electronic communications services to boost the audiovisual sector and cultural digital promotion (Llei 2014, de creació de l’impost sobre la provisió de continguts per part de prestadors de serveis de comunicacions electròniques per al foment del sector audiovisual i per a la difusió cultural digital (Act 2014)). The new tax will be charged from January 2015 onwards to electronic communications service providers and will consist in a fixed fee of EUR 0.25 a month per contract...

On 4 November 2014, the Spanish Parliament adopted a new law amending the Intellectual Property Act (Ley 21/2014, por la que se modifica el texto refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual (Act No. 21/2014)). The intellectual property legal framework, now partially amended, had been compiled in the Royal Decree 1/1996 (see IRIS 1996-6/17) and modified by the Act 1/2000 (see IRIS 2010-1/Extra). The provisions contained in the new 2014 Act will come into force on 1 January 2015. The amendments of this law are focused on the protection and strengthening of intellectual property rights, due to the...

In Spain, the Sociedad de Artistas Intérpretes o Ejecutantes de España (AIE), and the Asociación de Gestión de Derechos Intelectuales (AGEDI) are the collective management societies or performing rights societies respectively representing musical performing artists and phonogram producers. These collective management societies are entitled to administer the right to receive an equitable remuneration from any third party that publicly performs or communicates sound recordings to the public, such as bars, clubs and radios, cinemas and television broadcasters (when recordings are synchronised with...

On 1 October 2014, the European Commission concluded that subsidies granted in the Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha to fund the digitisation and extension of the terrestrial television network in remote areas were incompatible with EU state aid rules. The Commission also ordered the recovery of such aids worth EUR 46 million. This decision follows the conclusions already expressed in a decision of 19 June 2013, which referred to the national scheme to finance digital terrestrial television transition in Spain (see IRIS 2013-7/5). According to the Commission, the measure violated the principle...

On 4 July 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its opinion in Case C-295/12 (Telefónica SA and Others v. European Commission). In this case, the Court considered a request on appeal for the revocation of a fine imposed by the European Commission for anti-competitive pricing in Spanish broadband access markets. The case arose following a complaint to the Commission concerning the pricing policies of Telefónica SA and its subsidiaries submitted on 11 July 2003. The Commission subsequently examined whether the margin between the wholesale prices, which Telefónica charged...