Draft Law for the creation of the Office of Copyright and Related Rights

Draft Law for the creation of the Office of Copyright and Related Rights

On February 22, the draft Law for the creation of the Spanish Copyright and Related Rights Office was published in the Official Gazette of the Cortes Generales. The purpose of said draft Law is to create an autonomous body that has been called the Spanish Office of Copyright and Related Rights (hereinafter, “OEDAC”), attached to the Ministry of Culture and Sports, in charge of administrative activity in matters of intellectual property, as well as promoting the development of a comprehensive and effective policy for the promotion and protection of copyright and related rights.

What is the Copyright and Related Rights Office?

The OEDAC is a national office with the capacity to act and its own legal personality, which will provide great autonomy to implement a useful comprehensive policy, as well as the safeguarding of copyright and related rights, and this due to the wide scope that this asset has in the Spanish cultural sector. Its legal regime will be that of its own norm, as well as the general administrative norm and, in the absence of this, the common law.

The General Sub-Directorate for Intellectual Property and the General Directorate for Cultural Industries, Intellectual Property and Cooperation will be the bodies that will be in charge of carrying out the main tasks of this office. In this sense, the competences of the Intellectual Property Registry will be included, which, although it does not have a constitutive character, has a great presence when it comes to accrediting and protecting the rights recognized by the Intellectual Property Law.

In this sense, it will be an office that will allow the correct execution of the administrative activity that corresponds to the State in matters of intellectual property and will serve to mitigate Spain’s position of weakness and lack of strategic leadership in this matter.

What will the functions be?

One of the main functions carried out by the OEDC will consist of carrying out the functions that correspond to the General State Administration in matters of copyright and other intellectual property rights, and the promotion and implementation of the policy in this matter, in relation to the provisions of the Law and its Statute.

Likewise, it seeks to improve the power to execute the tasks and functions that are already carried out today in the field of intellectual property, such as issues concerning the monitoring of compliance with the provisions of the law or regulatory functions, which It will serve to advance the regulatory quality in this area. Thus, said improvement will progress to the extent that technology does today, as do great challenges such as the Metaverse or Artificial Intelligence.

Special attention will be paid to the protection of new piracy strategies resulting from the expansion of social networks, which have become the primary channel for reproduction and public communication of works protected by intellectual property and copyright.

It will seek to protect and adapt the constant legislation and those tools that serve as protection for consumers and content creators of streaming platforms, which are also protected by intellectual property regulations.

What will be possible violations?

It should be noted that the bill refers to the fact that the powers of inspection and sanction provided for in the intellectual property regulations will belong to the OEDAC, within the scope of the powers that correspond to it.

The sanctioning power that this body will have will guarantee the proper separation between the investigative phase, which will correspond to the executive bodies of the OEDAC, with the rank or level of competent sub-directorate general by reason of the matter, and the resolution phase, which will correspond to the Directorate of the OEDAC, as well as the rest of the principles applicable to the exercise of said power.

The collection of the pecuniary sanctions imposed by the OEDAC will be carried out by the bodies and procedures established in the General Collection Regulations, and other applicable regulations.

What benefits will it bring?

This norm will reinforce the administrative activity that corresponds to the State in terms of intellectual property in an efficient manner, in order to improve the current structure, complying with the milestones committed in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, which highlights cultural industries as one of its levers.

In this way, a great specialization of the public employees of the new office will be achieved, resulting in greater efficiency and quality in public policies and procedures related to this specialty.At Letslaw by RSM we are specialists in Intellectual Property, and we can provide you with advice on all those aspects that may arise in this matter.