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The heads of government of the Länder signed the 15. Rundfunkänderungsstaatsvertrag (15th Agreement Amending the Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement - RÄStV) at the Minister-Presidents’ conference held in Berlin on 15 December 2010. Under the agreement, a new contribution model for the financing of public service broadcasting will be introduced in 2013. The obligation to pay the licence fee will no longer be based on ownership of a reception device, but on that of a home (Art. 2(1) RÄStV), place of business (Art. 5(1) RÄStV) or non-privately used vehicle (Art. 5(2) RÄStV; see IRIS 2010-6/21). In...

On 18 November 2010, the Oberlandesgericht München (Munich Appeal Court - OLG) ruled in favour of RTL Television GmbH in its dispute with a company that provides technical support for the online video recorder (OVR) service Save.TV. In the first instance proceedings, RTL had obtained a temporary injunction against the Save.TV service company from the Landgericht München I (Munich District Court 1) for breach of its retransmission rights set out in Articles 87 and 20 of the Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act - UrhG) (see IRIS 2010-9/17). The Appeal Court upheld this decision with reference to the...

In a judgement of 24 November 2010, the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) quashed the decision of the Bayerische Verwaltungsgerichtshof (Bavarian Administrative Court - BayVGH) concerning Axel Springer AG’s planned takeover of private television broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 (P7S1) and referred the case back to the BayVGH. The legal dispute concerned Axel Springer AG’s plan to acquire all the shares in P7S1 and to submit a public takeover bid for the free-floating preference shares without voting rights attached. The Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien (Bavarian...

The Bundesministerium des Innern (Federal Ministry of the Interior - BMI) tabled a bill amending data protection law on 1 December 2010. The bill particularly included measures to prevent serious breaches of privacy. According to the ministry, the bill, which was initially submitted to the department ministers for a federal government vote, is mainly designed to strengthen the right of individuals to decide how their personal data is used on the Internet. For this reason, a new Article 38b is to be included in the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz (Federal Data Protection Act - BDSG), regulating the publication...

On 17 December 2010, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) decided that the owner of a plot of land could, in principle, prohibit the unauthorised creation and exploitation of photographs and film recordings of its property for commercial purposes. The plaintiff, the “Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten” (Prussian Castles and Gardens Foundation), a public law foundation, is responsible for looking after, maintaining and providing public access to numerous historic buildings and gardens of interest to tourists in the Länder of Berlin and Brandenburg. Two of the defendants sell...