SGAE postpones its General Assembly to Jan. 2020; launches new AV division

By Emmanuel Legrand

The Board of Directors of Spanish rights society SGAE has once again postponed the Extraordinary General Assembly during which the new statutes of the organisation were going to be presented for approval by SGAE members. The meeting was scheduled for October 15 and will not take place “until the beginning of the year 2020,” according to SGAE.

  The Board said the decision was due to what it described as "a legal paradox” and wanted to ensure that the vote could go ahead with the risk of facing a legal challenge. The paradox was raised when three international music publishers said they planned to withdraw their repertoire from SGAE, which according to article 27 of the current statutes of SGAE would prevent them from voting at the general assembly for the new statutes.

  However, the Ministry of Culture has asked SGAE to “respect” the companies' decision while at the same time enforcing article 27. In order to comply with both requests, the Board decided to push back the general assembly to January 2020, once the three companies will have effectively left SGAE.

  “With this decision, the Board of Directors intends to prevent the situation of legal uncertainty generated by the requirement of the Ministry,” said the society. SGAE's Board is also considering filing an administrative contentious appeal about the alleged interference of the Ministry. SGAE considers that the Ministry's requirement exceeded its powers and constituted “an overreach of the supervision functions that the Intellectual Property Law attributes to the Ministry of Culture.”

A 'historic' claim

  Meanwhile, SGAE's Board of directors has given its green light for the creation of an Audiovisual Division within the organisation. The new division will regroup all the services that SGAE provides to the audiovisual authors in a single administrative and stand-alone unit and will offer “a comprehensive, autonomous, specialised and highly qualified service to the almost 12,000 directors, screenwriters and audiovisual musicians who represent more than 85% of the national repertoire.”

  The division will cover all the processes related to audiovisual rights, including registration of works, contracts, documentation, distribution, fees, relations with partners and foreign companies, claims, market analysis and the development of proprietary tools to respond to the specificity needs of the sector. SGAE said the purpose of this organisational change was to “optimise the collection mechanisms, shorten the distribution deadlines and face, in a coordinated manner, the changes that are taking place in the film market, the television and the digital environment.”

  The move responds to a “historic” claim from the Audiovisual College, which received support from SGAE President Pilar Jurado and the Board. The project was coordinated by the vice president of the Audiovisual College, Antonio Onetti and will be under the leadership of Fabia Buenaventura, currently manager of the Audiovisual unit at SGAE, reporting directly to the director general of SGAE.