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On 6 February 2025, the German state media authorities published the results of their Info-Monitor 2025. This report examines where and how the German population obtains information about current affairs, analyses changes in consumer behaviour, and investigates the level of trust among the population and the trustworthiness of certain information sources in relation to their political standpoint. The results of the study, which is based on surveys of the 14+ age group, show that information habits vary depending on age, level of trust in established media, region and political preferences. The...

In mid-November 2024, the Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte (German collecting society for music rights – GEMA) announced that it was the first collecting society in Europe to file a lawsuit against the US company OpenAI for the unlicensed use of protected musical works. GEMA wants the courts to clarify the remuneration obligation that it thinks should arise from OpenAI’s systematic use of its repertoire to train its AI systems. It has also asked the Landgericht München (Munich District Court) to decide whether the...

In various judgments issued on 11 September 2024 (case Nos. I ZR 139/23; I ZR 140/23; I ZR 141/23), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH) decided that the use of images of a photo wallpaper on the Internet did not infringe rights protected under the Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act – UrhG) to the photographs printed on the wallpaper. The court examined in particular whether influencers could breach copyright law if protected works that they had no right to communicate to the public were visible in the background of videos or still images that they published in social...

On 17 September 2024, the notification of the planned merger between children’s TV channels Super RTL and Nickelodeon was withdrawn. The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office – BKartA), the competition authority responsible for mergers, had expressed concerns over negative effects on the children’s advertising market and was planning to block the merger. The German state media authorities, represented by the Kommission zur Ermittlung der Konzentration im Medienbereich (Commission on Concentration in the Media – KEK), were consulted by the Federal Cartels Office for the...

In a summary judgment of 13 September 2024 (case No. 3 S 103/24), the Oberverwaltungsgericht Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin-Brandenburg Higher Administrative Court – OVG) upheld the lower-instance court’s decision that the Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party – FDP) was not entitled to take part in an election programme to be broadcast by Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb) in the run-up to the Brandenburg state parliament election under the principle of equal opportunities for political parties. It ruled that, in accordance with its editorial freedom, rbb could exclude...