Barcelona court allows songwriters and publishers to withdraw their rights from Spanish society SGAE

By Emmanuel Legrand

 

A ruling by Barcelona’s Commercial Court just before Christmas has opened a new sequence in the on-going saga involving Spanish authors' society SGAE by authorising authors and publishers who wished to leave SGAE to withdraw their rights “without unnecessary and unjustified restrictions.”

  The interim measures taken by the court lifted SGAE clauses in the organisation's standard contracts that prevented the withdrawal of rights without limitations and also lifted provisions that prevented rights holders to withdraw partial rights from the society.

  However, the magnitude of the withdrawals was hard to evaluate at the start of 2020. Following the ruling by the Barcelona court, SGAE said in a December 30 statement that “both multinational and independent publishers, as well as practically all authors who had requested their withdrawal for this year, have announced the revocation of them prior to December 31 and, therefore, will remain in SGAE.”

 

An intense calendar

  SGAE added that the decision to stay with SGAE was the result of “a dialogue process by the presidency and its management team with all the sensibilities represented in the entity,” and that SGAE's leadership will have “an intense" calendar of meetings with publishers “to address the challenges of the entity's future.”

  The legal procedures were instigated by Barcelona-based rights society Unison, which has been trying to set up an alternative to SGAE. The court's decision should open to doors for songwriters and publishers who have been seeking to leave SGAE to join Unison. In 2016 Unison filed a complaint before the National Market and Competition Commission (CNMC) against SGAE, accusing SGAE to hinder Unison’s access to the rights management business in Spain.

  A May 2019 decision by the CNMC found SGAE guilty of abuse of a dominant position and imposed a fine of €2,949,660. Unison then asked the Commercial Court to issue a resolution to be applied as a matter of urgency that would compel SGAE to allow the owners to withdraw their rights from the society in accordance with the Spanish Competition Authority previous resolution, Directive 2014/26/EU and the recent reforms of Spain's Intellectual Property Act. Such request was granted at the end of 2019.

 

Puttin an end to SGAE's monopoly

  Unison CEO Jordi Puy said he was “satisfied that the resolution comes at the right time, since the rights holders who had requested the total or partial withdrawal of their repertoire from SGAE had done so with effect from 31 December 2019″ and because it is “another step in demonstrating that the monopoly on the management of music rights is history.”

  SGAE has been under pressure for now several years to change its governance statutes and fix a scam knows as “La Rueda” (The wheel). The society's inability to address these issues led the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers to suspend SGAE's membership from the global organisation. On two occasions, SGAE's leadership failed to win a majority to pass new statutes.

  On January 2, the Board of Directors of SGAE has approved the call for an Extraordinary General Assembly to be held on January 30, which is expected to vote on new governance proposals and renewed statutes. “With all the advances of the last months and a new vision of our organisation, participating in this Extraordinary General Assembly is fundamental so that with our new approved Statutes we can build the SGAE that we all deserve,” said the society in a statement.