/ Supreme Court will hear exceptional complaint recourse regarding copyrights
April 24, 2020Associate Alessandri
The Supreme Court is expected to hold a hearing in the coming months related to the appeals filed by a series of copyright users against the sentence issued by the Chilean Competition Tribunal, which rejected their request to make changes on Intellectual Property Law No. 17.336
In 2018 the National Television Association of Chile (Anatel by its Spanish initials) submitted a standard policy recommendation regarding Law No. 17.336 on Intellectual Property, a request to which a series of copyright users became party. The purpose of this measure is to exercise the faculty contemplated in article 18 N° 4 of DL N° 211, for the Chilean Competition Tribunal to propose to the President of the Republic, through the Ministry of Education and/or the Ministry of Arts and Heritage Cultures, or whichever is pertinent, the issuance of legal and/or regulatory provisions. These provisions are aimed at creating and promoting competition in the payment rates assigned to different works in the use of copyright. These rates are generally administered by copyright collecting societies.
In the discussion, Anatel and the other copyright users raised a series of matters with the Chilean Competition Tribunal, including among others that the current regulation allows copyright collecting societies a natural monopoly in the administration of intellectual property rights, which must necessarily be regulated. Also, that the current system to resolve controversies as established in IP Law is faulty, it has never been employed and thus should be modified.