The Criminal Court number 1 of Arrecife has sentenced Ángel Domingo Bermúdez de León to a penalty of one year and three months in prison and the payment of a fine of 3,240 euros and compensation of 7,400 euros for a crime against intellectual property. According to the ruling, the accused was acting as commercial director of Cash and Carry Lanzarote and included the image of the Arrecife Carnival poster of 2013 in an advertising brochure of the establishment, modifying it and without having "authorization for its reproduction and modification". Both the Arrecife City Council and the author of the poster, Nuria Meseguer, who is the one who will receive the compensation, were present as private prosecution in the procedure.
The sentence explains that the City Council commissioned the poster announcing the festivities to the artist and paid her 1,400 euros for it. It is considered proven that on March 3, 2013, the newspaper Canarias 7 included as a separate publication a brochure from the Cash and Carry Lanzarote supermarket, on whose cover appeared the artistic drawing made by the artist for the Carnival festivities. "Meseguer's work was modified, having superimposed on the image of her daughter, the loyalty card of the supermarket and the expression Get it", the sentence states.
The same indicates that the choice of the drawing and the design that was included in the advertising brochure was carried out following the orders of Ángel Domingo Bermúdez de León, who held the functions of commercial director of the establishment. It is considered proven that "he acted knowing that the artistic work had been used in the poster announcing the Arrecife Carnival and lacking authorization for its reproduction and modification".
"Moral damage"
The newspaper Canarias 7 sold a total of 1,640 copies in Lanzarote on March 3, 2013, according to the sentence, which contained the supermarket advertising brochure, which, according to the sentence, "caused moral damage to Nuria Meseguer, who was called by her friends and family asking about the cause of said alteration, showing their stupor".
In the resolution of the Criminal Court number 1 of Arrecife it is indicated that the economic damages caused to the artist "have not been proven". Nor has it been proven, according to what is stated, that the other defendant, Domingo José Robayna del Castillo, administrator of Cash and Carry, "was aware of or had any intervention in the action carried out by Ángel Domingo Bermúdez de León", so he acquits him of the crime of which he had been accused.
Thus, the sentence does not give credit to the statement of the convicted person, who "to exculpate himself in the act of the oral trial declared that he began working in 1985 and that since 2011-2012 he no longer had autonomy in the work, so he had to give Domingo José Robayna (owner and administrator of the company) an account of everything he did, including advertising".
Contradictions
In the trial, as detailed in the judicial resolution, two workers appeared as witnesses proposed by the defense of Ángel Domingo. "Supporting his thesis, they come to declare that since Domingo José was the owner and administrator, they assume that he should be aware of all the particularities of the company." However, they indicated that "they did not witness any conversation between him and Ángel Domingo regarding the advertising poster" nor did they have "knowledge of such circumstance with certainty".
In addition, in the trial Domingo José Robayna himself denied it "categorically, stating that he had another company that he went to daily" and that in Cash and Carry the other defendant "was the director" and "made all the decisions and even negotiated with the banks". And given the opposition of both statements, the ruling gives credibility to the version of Domingo José and not to that of Ángel Domingo, "due to the contradictions in which he incurs". In this sense, it is indicated, for example, that he himself in the instruction phase affirmed "that he had director functions". In addition, one of the witnesses proposed by his defense stated in the trial that he was the one who appointed her as manager. "So his powers even included the designation of the company's personnel", is revealed in the sentence.
On the other hand, another employee, an administrative assistant, pointed out both in the trial and previously that it was the director, Ángel Domingo Bermúdez, "who gave him orders and under whose dependence he acted". Regarding the publication in question of the brochure, the worker stated that "once he found the poster on the internet, Ángel Domingo told him to use it", despite the fact that he warned him that "the City Council was using it to announce the carnivals and that they might have problems". To which he replied "that nothing was going to happen because they were going to distribute few brochures".
