• 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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