The Mexican media conglomerate TelemundoNetwork Group has lost a lawsuit against Sandra Ávila Beltrán, 'The Queen of the Pacific,' and will have to pay her 448,000 pesos for the unauthorized use of her image to promote the series 'La Reina del Sur.' The plenary session of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) confirmed the fine imposed by the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), equivalent to 5,000 Measurement and Update Units (UMA), that is, approximately 448,000 pesos, for the use of the image for indirect commercial profit. Unanimously, under the project presented by the presiding minister, Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, the plenary session of the country's highest court denied the amparo to Telemundo and confirmed the fine established by the IMPI on December 3, 2021. Telemundo challenged the constitutionality of Articles 87 and 231, fraction II of the Federal Copyright Law before the SCJN, which state that a person's image can only be used with their express consent—except when captured in a public place for informational or journalistic purposes—and that its use without authorization for profit, direct or indirect, constitutes a commercial infringement. The Court determined the validity of the challenged norms by considering that they protect the right to one's own image and privacy, which derive from human dignity. 'In the case of private individuals, the right to one's own image presents greater resistance to the exercise of freedom of expression when the dissemination does not respond to a public interest,' expressed the presiding minister, Hugo Aguilar. He added: '...it is concluded that the matter has an exceptional constitutional and human rights interest, as it allows this Supreme Court to delimit the temporary limits of the sanctioning power of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, in Commercial Infringements, and the constitutional limits to freedom of expression, of the press, and the right of access to information in the face of the right to one's own image.' For her part, Minister Lenia Batres Guadarrama stated in her intervention: 'The facts show clearly that the image was not used to inform, but to promote a television product for commercial purposes, and since it is not an informative or journalistic use, the legal exception simply would not apply.' After the SCJN's ruling was made public, Isaac Razo, Ávila Beltrán's lawyer, told Milenio that his client can file a new lawsuit, now in the United States, with the objective of demanding 40% of the collection of royalties, as it is estimated that the series generated 800 million dollars only in the second season. Sandra Ávila Beltrán is the niece of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, known as 'El Padrino' and founder of the now-defunct Guadalajara cartel in the 1980s. Her parents are María Luisa Beltrán Félix and Alfonso Ávila Quintero, a relative of the former Guadalajara cartel leader, Rafael Caro Quintero. In 2007, she was detained in Mexico and later extradited to the United States, where she was sentenced in that country for aiding a drug trafficker.
