A Barcelona court has dismissed the lawsuit filed by the production company Reset TV, owned by Toni Cruz and Josep Maria Mainat, creators of Triumph operation (OT), against Veranda TV and the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals (CCMA) for alleged plagiarism with Euphoria. According to the ruling, the commercial court number 9 of Barcelona has acquitted the defendants of having committed alleged plagiarism with the musical program Eufòria, and has also condemned the plaintiff to pay costs. Cruz and Mainat argued that the Catalan program reproduced “with minor variations, the mechanics, phases and original aspects of OT”, as they stated in the lawsuit filed. The ruling does not examine whether the Catalan program is a copy, it only considers that the plaintiffs are not legitimized since they have not proven that they were the creators of OT.
The producers of OT asked for recognition that Veranda TV and the CCMA had infringed intellectual property rights, that the cessation of the activity of Euphoria and that the payment of compensation for damages be imposed, which their lawyer set at 25,000 euros for each of them. The case went to trial last July, where the experts of both parties expressed their disagreements on whether Euphoriaone of the most successful programmes on Catalan public television, could be considered a plagiarism of OT, based on the analysis of structural elements of the contests.
In the ruling, the court argued that the lawsuit for alleged plagiarism does not provide any evidence of the authorship of the OT format, nor that it is “well-known” that they are the creators of the program, something to which Cruz and Mainat had appealed. “It is unquestionable that said format is well-known to the public, but the notoriety falls on the OT program, not on who created it,” he says. Furthermore, “although it can be said that any person (average reasonable man) who was asked about the OT program could answer what it consists of (…), it cannot be said with complete certainty and certainty that any person can answer who is the author or creator of said format.”
Furthermore, the document stresses that “neither Mr. Cruz nor Mr. Mainat registered the OT program in the Intellectual Property Registry,” something that, although not a constitutive element, “does offer qualified proof of the authorship of a particular work.” The document highlights that their signatures are not included in the so-called OT Bible“in which no reference is made to the creator of the format”, nor to his signatures in the marketing dossier on the aforementioned programme, where no mention is made of its author either.
The judge concludes that there is “no other evidence or indication that would allow us to consider that this is a work conceived or created by Mr. Cruz and Mr. Mainat”, nor to what extent they were, since, in any case, it would be a collective work. In addition, she indicates that the public references to Mr. Cruz and Mr. Mainat are “at all times” in their capacity as producers of the OT programme and as executives of Gestmusic, “but not as authors/creators of the format, which is independent of the status of television producer or executive director of a production company”.
As regards Reset TV’s legitimacy in the proceedings, the ruling explains that the production company Gestmusic is “the exclusive assignee of all the property rights over the OT format” and, therefore, the only one that could carry out the actions exercised in the lawsuit. The judge states that the lack of active legitimacy of the plaintiffs must be upheld, “without entering into the examination of the other controversial issues” raised in the case, such as the analysis of the OT format and the elements that directly refer to the alleged plagiarism. The ruling that dismisses the lawsuit for alleged plagiarism is not final and can be appealed before the Barcelona Court.
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