Spain approves royalties on content snippets in search engine results
Spain’s Congress voted the so-called ‘Google tax’ Act that introduces royalties for the online use of fragments of information, opinion and entertainment grouped together, for example, on search engines.
Under the new legislation, which is to come into force on January 1st, 2015, royalties must be paid to the content owners for snippets of the information which are typically used to give context to the links that result from an online search.
The reform of IP law also provisions tougher penalties, including fines of up to €600,000 against the owners of websites containing links to illegal pirate downloads.