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On 7 July 2011, the Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht der Landesmedienanstalten (Licensing and Monitoring Commission of the State Media Authorities - ZAK) announced that the special interest television broadcaster Sport 1 and the Landesmedienanstalten (State media authorities - LMA) had agreed to settle their disputes concerning consumer protection in game shows (see IRIS 2011-1/23). Under the settlement, the broadcaster Sport 1 recognised the media authorities’ interpretation of the rules on competitions adopted in 2009 (see IRIS 2009-3/12) as binding, withdrew its appeals and objections against...

On 28 June 2011, the Kommission für Zulassung und Aufsicht der Medienanstalten (Licensing and Monitoring Commission of the State Media Authorities - ZAK) complained that several RTL and Sat.1 programmes had infringed the rules on the separation of advertising and programme content set out in Article 7(3) of the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement). Both TV companies had, in a total of three cases, used so-called move-splits, a form of split-screen advertising in which a particular advertisement appears as part of a scene somewhere on the screen and the camera then zooms in...

According to media reports, the Oberlandesgericht Dresden (Dresden Appeal Court - OLG) issued its ruling in the case between the online video recording service Save.tv and the RTL media group (case no. 14 U 801/07) on 12 July 2011. Save.tv reported that the court had decided that its online video recorder did not infringe the broadcaster’s right of reproduction. In the same case, the OLG Dresden had already ruled in favour of Save.tv on 9 October 2007. However, after upholding an appeal against this ruling, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) decided on 22 April 2009 (case no. I...

On 10 May 2011, in a dispute between the plaintiff, Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e.V. (federal association of consumer organisations), and Deutscher Brauer-Bund e.V. (German brewers’ association), the Landgericht Berlin (Berlin District Court - LG) ruled that advertising should not claim that beer can improve people’s looks or health. The case concerned information published on the defendant’s website about the effects of beer on human health. It was claimed, inter alia, that moderate beer consumption reduced the risk of dementia, adult diabetes and cardiovascular problems, and that its high...

In several rulings issued on 17 August 2011, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) decided that Internet-capable PCs used for professional purposes could be exempted from the licence fee obligation (see IRIS 2009-7/14). The rulings followed complaints lodged by three self-employed individuals who worked from home. Their home offices contained Internet-capable PCs that they used for work purposes. These devices were subject to fees levied by the public service broadcasters because they were considered as new types of broadcast-receiving devices in the sense of the...