The 9th Section of the Commercial Court of Barcelona, in its ruling dated July 29, 2024, addressed a case concerning the exercise of an action for intellectual property rights infringement. In this case, it was alleged that the television program “Eufòria” had plagiarized the format of “Operación Triunfo” (hereinafter, OT).
The complaint presented two actions: 1) One for the infringement of intellectual property rights, and 2) Another for unfair competition. However, the court only considered the infringement of intellectual property rights, as the complaint did not reference the Unfair Competition Act either in the legal grounds or in the prayer for relief. The claimant sought a declaration of infringement of the purported patrimonial and moral intellectual property rights over the OT program.
The defendant, in turn, raised the following defenses: 1) lack of standing; 2) lack of objective and subjective originality of the OT format; 3) absence of plagiarism; and 4) inadmissibility of the claimed damages.
Regarding standing, the defendant argued that no evidence was provided to prove that the claimant was the author of the OT television format or that they held rights over it. In this regard, the court noted that, although OT is widely known, no sufficient evidence was presented to establish the claimant’s authorship, and OT was not registered with the Intellectual Property Registry, further weakening the claimant’s arguments.
Furthermore, although evidence was presented indicating that the claimant held a license over the program, it was not demonstrated that they had received an assignment of rights over the format, which is necessary to establish standing. The court therefore concluded that, under the said license, the licensee would hold the patrimonial rights.
As a result, due to the inability to prove standing, the complaint was dismissed, and the claimant was ordered to pay the costs.
9th Section of the Commercial Court of Barcelona, in its ruling dated July 29, 2024- ROJ: SJM B 44/2024