As we indicated a few months ago, the partial reform of the intellectual property law continues its journey towards the Lower House of the Spanish Parliament. On Friday, February 14, the Cabinet approved the text of the preliminary bill, which must now get the green light from the consultative bodies and be debated in Parliament as a bill before its definitive approval.

The main lines of the approved text are those we advanced in our previous post:

1. Private copying

The reform amends the limit on private copying and restricts the cases considered as private copying. It also maintains the replacement of the “levy” with fair compensation, paid out of General State Budget.

2. Collecting societies

It includes measures to improve transparency and control of collecting societies by the Ministry of Culture and to ensure the fair nature of the tariffs applied to users of their repertoires. A one-stop shop regime is implemented.

3. Protection of intellectual property on the Internet

New measures are envisaged to ensure the effectiveness of mechanisms to protect intellectual property rights from online infringement. The measures adopted facilitate the pursuit of websites that provide descriptions or locations of illegal content in an active, non neutral way.

4. Limit on rights of media outlets

The approved text nevertheless introduces a significant and unexpected new feature with respect to the draft text published by the Ministry on its website: a new limit on the rights of media outlets, whereby they cannot prevent content aggregators from using their online publications. In exchange, these outlets will be entitled to receive fair compensation.