The Offices imposed fine exceeding CZK 10 million on the collective rights management organisation OSA for abuse of dominant position
The collective rights management organisation violated both the Czech Competition Act and the EU competition rules by imposing inadequate conditions on accommodation facilities for acquiring licenses for usage of copyright by means of audio or audio-visual devices in rooms of accommodation facilities between 2008 and 2014.
The abuse consisted in the fact that within the abovementioned period, the party to the proceedings did not take into account the occupancy of rooms in accommodation facilities. On that basis, the operators of accommodation facilities paid for licences even when the room was not occupied at all. It is worth mentioning that the party had took the occupancy of rooms into account until 18/5/2008 as a relevant criteria for calculation of royalties, but it seized from this practice in connection to the introduction of statutory regulation of the maximum level of royalties. Therefore, it is obvious that the only reason for seizing from the taking the room occupancy into account was an effort to maximize the amount of the royalties collected from the accommodation facilities.
The Office has found that the requirement of royalty payment even in cases when it can be proved that the copyright work could not been used by the acquirer of the license, i. e. when the room was not occupied and therefore no consideration was provided, can’t be seen as an adequate condition and it thereby does not fulfil the requirement of proportionality of mutual performance and consideration of the contract.
Given the fact that the OSA represents foreign authors as well, the Office considers that the trade between member states has been affected.
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