The Spanish competitors authority CNMC has fined accumulating society SGAE €6.4 million (USD $6.9 million at present alternate charges) for anti-competitive practices in its licensing offers with radio and TV stations.
The problem lies in SGAE’s use of flat-rate licensing charges for the usage of its musical and audiovisual repertoire. The CNMC mentioned in a press launch final week (June 26) that SGAE designed its charges in a approach that pressured most radio and tv operators to just accept an “averaged availability price.”
The usage of flat charges, based on the CNMC, prevents operators from getting a price primarily based on their precise use of music and limits their incentive to contemplate SGAE’s rivals. If a broadcaster indicators a cope with a competing licensing group, and makes use of that competing group’s music, it should nonetheless need to pay the identical quantity to SGAE.
The CNMC additionally sanctioned SGAE for presenting its musical repertoire to customers as “common” and for “providing ensures of indemnity towards attainable claims by third events for the usage of rights not belonging to its repertoire.”
The probe into SGAE started following complaints from entities Audiovisual Media Copyright, Administration Entity (Dama), and Unison, CNMC mentioned.
“The CNMC once more concludes that SGAE distorted competitors, stopping or hindering the entry of latest gamers into the downstream licensing market to broadcasting entities, thus incurring two very severe infringements for abuse of dominant place.”
Unison
Unison mentioned it filed a grievance towards SGAE in 2016 over what it describes because the “abuse of dominant place” within the accumulating society’s use of “flat” or availability charges within the downstream TV and radio broadcasting market, in addition to for licensing its repertoire “with a supposedly common extent.”
“The CNMC once more concludes that SGAE distorted competitors, stopping or hindering the entry of latest gamers into the downstream licensing market to broadcasting entities, thus incurring two very severe infringements for abuse of dominant place,” Unison mentioned in a separate press launch.
Along with the tremendous, SGAE has additionally been ordered to stop its infringing behaviors. The CNMC has additionally agreed to use to SGAE the prohibition of contracting with the Public Administration, the length and scope of which can be decided by Spain’s State Public Procurement Advisory Board.
That is the second time SGAE has been fined by CNMC for hindering competitors. In 2019, Unison was instrumental in lobbying the CNMC to tremendous SGAE €2.95 million for abusing its dominant place in Spain’s music copyright market. That very same 12 months, SGAE had been kicked out of CISAC, the Worldwide Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, following complaints from publishers of ‘discriminatory therapy of rightsholders and unfair practices referring to the distribution of royalties’.
In the meantime, the most recent improvement comes because the Spanish Supreme Courtroom is at the moment reviewing one other case towards SGAE. Unison says it had claimed damages ensuing from this grievance, and as of February 16, 2024, the SGAE had been ordered to compensate Unison for the damages triggered.
“With this new decision, the CNMC confirms that SGAE has been abusing its dominant place repeatedly since 2016, imposing and sustaining important obstacles to entry for brand spanking new operators. Particularly, the CNMC has confirmed SGAE’s anti-competitive actions within the upstream market throughout the interval 2016-2018 and within the downstream markets from at the very least 2019 to the current,” Unison mentioned.
Unison, a personal musical rights administration firm primarily based in Barcelona, operates as an impartial administration entity underneath the Spanish Mental Property Act. As the primary personal musical rights supervisor in Spain, Unison mentioned it goals to convey transparency and equity to the administration of authors’ rights.
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