Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism of the : Constitutional Court Rules Two Articles of Law 1520 of 2012 as Unenforceable.

Bogota, January 23, 2012.- As reported by various media outlets, on January 23, 2013, the Constitutional Court declared Articles 13 and 14 of Law 1520 of 2012 as unenforceable, by procedural defects, regarding commitments implemented under the Trade Promotion Agreement, signed between the Republic of Colombia and the United States of America.*

Bogota, January 23, 2012.- As reported by various media outlets, on January 23, 2013, the Constitutional Court declared Articles 13 and 14 of Law 1520 of 2012 as unenforceable, by procedural defects, regarding commitments implemented under the Trade Promotion Agreement, signed between the Republic of Colombia and the United States of America.*

In accordance with the commitments made under the Free Trade Agreement with the United States of America, Article 13 expressly required not to allow the broadcasting of television signals over the Internet, without the authorization of the right holder or holders of signal content.

For its part, Article 14, which regulates technological protection measures, in order to ensure that, in certain cases, a breach of copyright or related measures will be liable to civil charges, and thus, would have to compensate for related damages. This is to provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures.

Nevertheless, Article 15 incorporates exceptions, as indicated in Article 14, in order to safeguard the public interest. For example, the circumvention of a technological measure in order to block content that has been deemed as inappropriate for children or for the purpose of safeguarding the security of information will not be considered as an infringement of copyright or related rights.

According to information from the press, the Court's decision would have been made as a result of the approval process by the Second Committees and not by the First Committees of the Senate and House.

Minister Diaz-Granados said that the Administration is awaiting the press release in which the Constitutional Court will report on its decision, so that the necessary actions may be taken to address the concerns of the court and continue in compliance with the international obligations of the State.

As for the bill pending before the Second Committees, he noted that, in due course, the Administration has argued before the Court that since the law was issued to meet the commitments of an international trade agreement which also regulates aspects of intellectual property, in accordance with the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court, "in many cases, the distribution of bills for approval on the first reading is approximated, given the special conditions of the contents of each one. Although Law 3 of 1992 makes a thematic distribution between the standing committees, the breadth and variety of constitutional principles to be developed by law and the dynamics and specificity of each subject require a certain degree of flexibility, when distributing bills for their review, processing, and approval in the first debate." As such, "the constitutional control exercised must be flexible"(Ruling C-540 of 2001, Magistrate Jaime Cordoba Trivino).

* The Law of 1520 regulates issues of copyright protection in the digital environment, including the term of copyright protection, whether or not the holder is a legal person, as well as the retransmission of television signals over the Internet, liability for circumvention of technological measures, powers of judges, in case of copyright infringement, and the share of television audience.

LSC/ LSC