Search results : 1348

In two recent judgments issued on 21 July and 9 September 2020, the Landgericht Köln (Cologne Regional Court, Case no. 33 O 138/19) and the Oberlandesgericht Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe Regional Court of Appeal, Case no. 6 U 38/19) ruled that Instagram influencers were obliged to label references to brand names as advertising. The Landgericht Köln decided that such posts by Instagram influencers should be labelled as advertising even if no remuneration was involved. Product recommendations constituted a commercial practice even if no advertising contract had been agreed. In this case,...

On 21 August 2020, the Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz (Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media – KJM) published a report entitled “Search engine filter mechanisms”. The report, prepared by jugendschutz.net on behalf of the KJM, studied the security settings of Germany’s two most popular search engines, Google and Bing. It concluded that, even when security settings were activated, children and young people using both platforms could easily come into contact with content that could harm their development, especially through search results relating to...

In a ruling of 3 September 2020, the third civil chamber of the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH), Germany’s highest civil court, decided that the widow of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl was entitled to information about the existence and whereabouts of copies of tape recordings with a view to filing a subsequent surrender claim against the defendant, a well-known journalist. The dispute followed a claim for information about the existence and, in particular, the whereabouts of written, digital and other copies of tape recordings of interviews that the defendant...

On 24 June 2020, the German Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz (Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection – BMJV) published a discussion draft for a “Second Act to adapt copyright law to the requirements of the Digital Single Market”. The draft contains proposals for the implementation of several provisions of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (EU) 2019/790 (DSM Directive), which entered into force last year. Among other things, it introduces two new legal instruments into German copyright law with provisions on the liability...

In a decision of 23 June 2020, the German Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH), the highest civil court in Germany, provisionally upheld the charge that Facebook had abused a dominant market position. The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office), which is responsible for competition-related matters in Germany, had previously prohibited social media provider Facebook from processing data captured during Internet use outside the Facebook platform without the users’ specific consent. Under the BGH’s decision, the prohibition notice can now be enforced. The case concerns...