Television The Court of Barcelona orders Atresmedia to stop the broadcast of El Rosco in Pasapalabra, but the Supreme Court will decide
The final test of
Pasapalabra
, known as
El Rosco
, is the jewel in the crown of the most watched program on television in Spain.
Understanding
Pasapalabra
without
El Rosco
is practically impossible.
However, on November 17, the Provincial Court of Barcelona endangered the continuity of the mythical test by estimating the appeal of the Dutch production company
MC&F Broadcasting Production and Distribution
(MC&F) against
Atresmedia
and
ITV
for using the space known as
El Rosco
inside
Pasapalabra
.
The Court of Barcelona ordered the immediate cessation of the broadcast of
El Rosco
and the alarms went off again around
Pasapalabra
.
But, despite the order,
El Rosco
de
Pasapalabra
is not going to stop broadcasting for the moment or probably for many years, even the most certain thing is that
El Rosco
will continue to be part of
Pasapalabra
sine die
.
Where does the legal battle for this test come from?
How far can you go?
And what has been the judicial path of this fight?
The decision is up to the Supreme
El Rosco will continue to be broadcast every afternoon on Antena 3. The Provincial Court of Barcelona considered last Thursday that this final test violates
MC&F
's intellectual property rights
over
El Rosco
and imposed compensation for moral damages on
Atresmedia
of 50,000 euros.
ITV and Atresmedia won the lawsuit filed by
MC&F in the first instance,
but the Dutch production company appealed and now the Barcelona Court has agreed with it.
However, at the moment
El Rosco
de
Pasapalabra is
not in any danger.
Why?
Because
Atresmedia
, which acquired the rights to the
Pasapalabra
format when in 2019 the Supreme Court ordered the immediate cessation of the broadcast on Telecinco, is going to appeal to the TS the decision of the Provincial Court of Barcelona.
What does this mean, because despite the fact that
MC&F
requested precautionary measures or a provisional execution of the stoppage of broadcasts on
Antena 3
, this will not occur until the
Supreme Court
rules, and several years may pass.
At the moment,
Atresmedia
has not filed the appeal, but it is in due time carrying out the "preliminary procedural steps", so even if
MC&F
demands the application of the precautionary measures, it is necessary to wait for the filing of the appeal, after the decision of the judges on these measures and, therefore, the appeal would already be filed and, therefore, these measures would be paralyzed until the Supreme Court makes its decision.
In addition, not only do you have to wait for
Atresmedia
to present the appeal, it is accepted and the Supreme Court decides, which generally takes years, but the production company from which
Antena 3
bought the rights to the program,
the British ITV
, can reach before an agreement with
MC&F
, which would once and for all put an end to this tedious and long legal battle.
Where does El Rosco come from?
To understand the decision of the Provincial Court of Barcelona and the beginnings of the legal battle, one must know how
El Rosco was
born , when and from where.
It was in 1998 and it was not called
El Rosco
by any means .
It was the
21X100
test , the name it received because in it two or more participants faced a round of questions about the 21 letters of the Italian alphabet -there are
not even J, K, N, W, X and Y-
that had to answer in a maximum time of 100 seconds.
21X100
was the final test of the original British
Pasapalabra
format , known as
The Alphabet Game
.
In the first broadcasts this test did not exist, which was incorporated later.
And here comes the problem.
The creators of
21X100
were
Reto Luigi Pianta
and
René Mauricio Loeb
, who sold it to the Dutch company
MC&F
, which in turn licensed it directly to the Italian company
Einstein so that it could be included in the
Passaparola
contest
, the Italian version of
Pasapalabra
, which It was created by the production company
ITV
and by
Einstein
.
It was
Einstein
who licensed and created the British version,
The Alphabet Game
, on the one hand, and, on the other, under a separate license, the final proof,
21X100
.
In other words, even if they were broadcast in the same program, they were two formats with two different licenses.
And here the heart of the problem, its authors claim to have the license through their company,
the Dutch MC&F
, since they only sold the rights to the Italian version,
Passaparola
.
The story is that
ITV
, creators of the British version,
The Alphabet Game
, were the ones who sold the version to Spain, but also including the final test,
21X100
, father of
El Rosco
, which had its own license.
Summing up,
Pasapalabra
is born from
The Alphabet Game
, a British version created by ITV with its own license, which later incorporated the final test of
21X100
-
El Rosco
-, whose license
MC&F
claims to own , which only ceded it for the Italian version.
From 21X100 to El Rosco in the Pasapalabra of Spain
21X100
can be said to be the germ of the famous
Rosco
, since in Spain it has been adapted not only to the Spanish alphabet with its 28 letters but also to the mechanics of all
Pasapalabra
.
That is to say,
El Rosco
is made up of 28 questions and with a time that can exceed 100 seconds of the original format.
Pasapalabra
gives the two contestants 85 seconds for
El Rosco
to which must be added the seconds that each contestant gets during the tests prior to the final test.
In other words, in Spain El Rosco has created its own identity.
The origin of the messy legal battle
In Spain we have to go back to the time when
Pasapalabra
was broadcast on
Telecinc
o.
Although the decision of the Provincial Court of Barcelona has nothing to do with what happened so that
Pasapalabra
stopped broadcasting on
Telecinco
, it does have its roots there.
Everything comes from these two licences, that of
The Alphabet Game
, owned by
ITV
, and that of
21X100
, owned, as they say, by
MC&F
.
When
ITV
sold the format to Spain -the British version and not the Italian one, which does have both licences- it did so as if it were a program with a single license and, then, is when
Mediaset
decided to break the agreement with
ITV
claiming that it did not he could market a format that was not one hundred percent his.
After years of litigation, the
Supreme Court
agreed with the British production company and ordered
Telecinco
to immediately cease broadcasting
Pasapalabra
, "being also prohibited from resuming in the future, the broadcast, edition, production, reproduction, public communication, distribution, transformation and all and any other form of exploitation, by itself or through third parties, of the
Pasapalabra program"
.
Atresmedia
did not doubt that it had to buy
the broadcasting rights for
Pasapalabra from
ITV
and, very shortly after,
Pasapalabra
returned to the television channel where it was born, becoming the most watched program on television with impressive audience data.
In the legal battle between
Mediaset
and
ITV
, the Dutch
MC&F
did not intervene.
However, when
Pasapalabra
returned to Spanish television with
Antena 3
, the Dutch production company initiated legal actions so that
Pasapalabra
would be broadcast in Spain without
El Rosco
, using the same argument as Mediaset: it cannot market a format that is not one hundred percent
ITV
.
And, once again, it returns to the 2019 Supreme Court ruling in which it was ensured that
Pasapalabra
and
El Rosco
are
an indivisible format
, to which
ITV
and
Atresmedia
cling to to defend the broadcast of the famous final test.
In fact, in the first instance, the courts sided with the British production company and
Atresmedia
, but
MC&F
appealed that decision and it was when the Provincial Court of Barcelona threw that "indivisible unit" to the ground, agreeing with
MC&F
.
It is curious that this legal battle has only taken place in Spain, since in the rest of the countries where
Pasapalabra
is broadcast , such as Chile, Argentina or France,
MC&F
has not filed any claim for the rights to
El Rosco
.
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