During 2019, the FCSE investigated a total of 262 possible infractions to the Intellectual Property Law that affected 240 alleged violators. The investigations allowed to clarify 194 of the cases, 74 percent.
Andalusia (with 49 actions), Catalonia (with 48) and Madrid (43) are the autonomous communities in which the most investigations have been opened in the past year. However, it is in the Catalan community where the greatest number of objects have been intervened (7,277), followed by Madrid (7,214) and Andalusia (6,523).
These data are collected in the Balance 2019 of the fight against the violation of intellectual property rights, which are published by the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Culture and Sports, in collaboration with the National Association for the Defense of the Brand (ANDEMA) , association attached to the Higher Council of Chambers of Commerce.
This balance includes the total of the police interventions carried out by the Civil Guard, the National Police, the Navarra Police Force and the Mossos d'Esquadra, as well as by the local police forces that provide data to the Statistical Crime System (SEC). The complete statistical study is available through the Criminal Statistics Portal and from the website of the Ministry of Culture and Sports.
The infringement of intellectual property rights, both physically and via the Internet, may constitute a civil offense before which the corresponding lawsuit can be filed in order to compensate the damage caused and, in the most serious cases, a criminal offense contained in articles 270, 271 and 272 of the Penal Code.
The balance of 2019 reflects that the majority of police seizures have been made in establishments or public places (20.73 percent); secondly, they occurred in the customs areas of ports and airports (20.23%), and, thirdly, in private homes (18.97%).
Anti-Piracy Section
The Second Section of the Intellectual Property Commission (Anti-Piracy Section) of the Ministry of Culture and Sport has achieved the best results in terms of protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet in its recent history. Since 2019, it has managed to withdraw more than 640,000 cultural contents that were being offered to the public through infringing web pages.
Throughout its activity since 2012, this collegiate body has received a total of 671 complaints from cultural authors and creators who saw how its contents were being exploited without their authorization on the Internet.
The global number of websites affected by the actions of the Anti-Piracy Section amounts to 677. More than 300 of those websites affected by the actions of the Anti-Piracy Section were blocked in Spanish territory after authorizations from the Central Administrative Litigation Courts to do so. corresponding.
Currently, more than 94% of the affected websites have ceased their infringing activity or do not offer this content fraudulently after the execution of the measures imposed by this collegiate body.
The Anti-Piracy Section publishes quarterly a list of more than 267 web domain names that have been the subject of its final resolutions with the aim of helping to reduce the financing of these domains through advertising.
