Intellectual property crime under Art. 270 CP: plagiarism and piracy

Crimes against intellectual property (Art. 270 CP) protect creations of the human spirit. In the digital age, the line between 'inspiration', 'private copying', and criminal offense is blurred. Since 2026, criminal courts are applying stricter criteria against mass piracy and indirect advertising benefits. Our specialist criminal lawyers in Madrid can help you with this type of situation.

What Article 270 CP punishes and the penalties

Article 270.1 CP punishes with six months to four years in prison and a fine of twelve to twenty-four months anyone who reproduces, plagiarises, distributes or publicly communicates —or otherwise economically exploits— a literary, artistic or scientific work without the authorization of the intellectual property rights holders, provided they act with intent to obtain a direct or indirect economic benefit and to the detriment of a third party. Street or occasional distribution is reduced to six months to two years in prison (Art. 270.4 CP), with the possibility of a fine or community service where the benefit is of minor value. The aggravated cases in Article 271 CP —special economic importance, special gravity, an organization or the use of minors— raise the penalty to two to six years in prison, a fine of eighteen to thirty-six months and special disqualification.

Requirements of the Crime of Plagiarism

For a criminal conviction, three elements must concur: infringement of intellectual property rights, intent to obtain direct or indirect economic benefit, and harm to a third party. Mere copying without authorization is not enough if there is no lucrative purpose. However, the concept of 'indirect profit' has expanded to cover, for example, advertising revenue on download sites.

Each element does real work in the analysis:

• Infringement of intellectual property rights: exploiting someone else's work —reproducing it, distributing it, communicating it publicly or plagiarising it— without the authorization of the rights holder.
• Lucrative purpose: the conduct must be aimed at obtaining an economic benefit, direct or indirect. This is the filter that separates criminal piracy from everyday copying.
• Harm to a third party: the conduct must be capable of damaging the rights holder, typically by displacing the legitimate exploitation of the work.

Crime vs Civil Infringement

Not every unauthorized use of a protected work is a crime. Where the elements above are incomplete —above all, where there is no lucrative purpose— the dispute belongs to the civil courts, which can order the infringement to stop and award compensation, but without criminal penalties. That is the usual terrain of the 'private copying' debate: personal use without any profit motive lacks the core ingredient of the criminal offense.

The boundary with 'inspiration' raises a different question. Ideas, styles and genres are free; what intellectual property protects is the concrete, original expression of a work. Plagiarism in the criminal sense involves appropriating the substantial original elements of someone else's creation and presenting them as one's own — not writing in a similar style or addressing the same subject. Distinguishing one from the other often requires expert comparison of the works involved.

Indirect Profit and Mass Piracy

The expansion of 'indirect profit' is the development with the greatest practical impact. The operators of download or linking sites rarely charge users anything; their income arrives through advertising displayed to the traffic the unauthorized content attracts. Treating that advertising revenue as an indirect economic benefit brings the business model of mass piracy squarely within the criminal offense, even though no user ever pays for a download. It is on this front —large-scale platforms monetized through advertising— that courts are applying the strictest criteria, rather than on isolated end users.

Defence Strategies

Accusations under Art. 270 CP are technical, and the defence follows the elements of the offense:

• Disputing the lucrative purpose: if the use of the work was not aimed at economic benefit, the conduct may be a civil matter, but it is not a crime.
• Authorization and licences: examining whether the use was actually covered —in whole or in part— by a licence, an assignment of rights or the rights holder's consent, and what the exact scope of that authorization was.
• Originality and substantiality: challenging whether the allegedly copied elements were original and protected at all, or whether the similarity stays on the free side of the line — ideas, style, genre.
• Quantifying the harm: reviewing how the alleged damage to the rights holder has been calculated, an assessment that is frequently inflated and can be contested with expert evidence.
• Authorship of the operation: in website cases, establishing who actually controlled and profited from the platform is a technical question that cannot be resolved by assumption.