Mr Escolar has an amusing post about US pressure on Spain’s main political parties to put an end to massive intellectual property abuse in the country, and about confusion stateside re the support for the pirates from the PP, who sell hanging and flogging fantasies to voters where other property crime is involved.

Spain is a consumer not a producer of ideas, so it’s not surprising that the populace takes a Somali view of creative rights, but the cheap and shoddy shamelessness of the theft still never ceases to amuse.

I’m still a big fan of the plagiarism by Grupo Cortefiel of the Victoria’s Secret lingerie brand as Women’Secret, which was followed by legal battles against smaller parasites like Secretos de Mujer–big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite them, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

But today walking up c/ Escorial in Barcelona I came with pleasure on what looks like a new classic in the making. At 120 we have a franchise of the well-established cheap groceries chain, Consum, while newly opened at 145 (and not yet on GM) we encounter a franchise of a new cheap groceries chain with a quite different name: Conssum.

According to the latter’s website they will already send your onions to places like … Somalia. However, since Conssum.com was only registered a month ago by a Romanian called Marin Capraru resident in a Zaragoza village, I wouldn’t bet on them getting there.

Tags: grocer, intellectual property, PP, PSOE, retail, Spain, theft, trademark, USA
Categories: Les bourgeois, Monsters, The law court, Vegetables, War

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1. “el Primo”
   December 10th 2009 22:59

   What do you mean “property” and “theft”?? Copyrights** are not “property”, but a legally enforced monopoly. And copyright violations are not theft, because there’s no property to be stolen.
   **The same applies to trademarks and patents.

2. A Nun
   December 11th 2009 11:16

   Sounds like a Zaragoza farmers’ coop trying to cut out the distributors and sell direct – supermarkets pay such low prices now and farm wages are so high that this is becoming common. The Romanian is probably being paid by them to do all the smart stuff. The cynical view of Spanish justice implied could be either his or theirs.