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In March 2010, the European Commission sent a letter of formal request for information to Spain under EU infringement procedures (Article 258 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) in relation to a new administrative charge imposed on national telecoms operators. The charge, which amounts to 0.9% of the yearly turnover of telecoms operators, was introduced through Spanish Law 8/2009 on the funding of the Spanish Radio and Television Corporation in order to offset the elimination of paid advertising on the Spanish public service broadcaster Corporación de Radio y Televisión Española...

The European Commission has approved a EUR 12 million Spanish scheme to support the dubbing and subtitling of films in Catalan. The scheme is in line with EU rules that allow State subsidies for cultural objectives and, in the case in question, for the promotion of multilingualism and cultural diversity. The scheme notified by the Spanish government aims to promote the use of the Catalan language, in particular in the film industry. Around 800 films released in Spain every year are dubbed in Spanish, while only 20-25 films are dubbed in Catalan. A further 10-15 are subtitled in Catalan. These figures...

Last Thursday, 18 March 2010, the Spanish Parliament approved the New General Law of Audiovisual Communications. This new Law has been demanded by the audiovisual sector and consumers associations and has been discussed on various occasions in the last six years in the Spanish Parliament before finally being approved. The Law sets out several rules on content and mode of operation for the players in the sector (these rules are already currently applied by broadcasters to a certain extent as, although they were not included in a general law before, they could already be found in several rules and...

The Spanish Supreme Court has delivered an opinion of unconstitutionality against the law that obliges Spanish television broadcasters to earmark part of their gross revenue for the financing of Spanish and European cinematographic productions. The Unión de Televisiones Comerciales Asociadas (Associated Commercial Televisions Union - UTECA), an entity formed by the six private Spanish television broadcasters, has been claiming the unconstitutionality of this regulation, which, however, has been obeyed by its members for the past ten years. The regulation was introduced in Spain in 1999 and was...

The current Spanish Intellectual Property Law is the Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996 of 12 April (as amended) approving the Consolidated Act on Intellectual Property, which regularises, clarifies and harmonises the applicable statutory provisions. This Legislative Decree is a consolidation of all previous regulations on copyright which were standing at the time of its adoption and aims at their regularisation, clarification and harmonisation. The Legislative Decree was adopted on the basis of the Second Final Provision of Act 27/1995 of 11 October on the incorporation in Spanish legislation of...