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On 30 May 2007, the Hessian Parliament adopted a decision amending the Hessisches Privatrundfunkgesetz (Hessian Private Broadcasting Act - HPRG), which is the legal basis for the rights of the private electronic media in the Land of Hesse. The amendment extended the Act’s scope of application to telemedia comparable to broadcasting (i.e., telemedia directed at the public). This is reflected in the new name of the supervisory authority: Hessische Landesanstalt für privaten Rundfunk und neue Medien (Hesse State Authority for Commercial Broadcasting and New Media). The amendment, in particular the...

According to press reports, in response to an application by the television broadcasting group BSkyB, the Landgericht Berlin (Berlin District Court) issued an interim injunction on 6 June 2007 prohibiting the broadcaster Premiere from either using the word “Sky” as part of the “Premiere Sky” satellite TV package that it has announced or as part of the name of the subsidiary company that operates the package (Premiere Sky GmbH), due to the risk of confusion, and pending a decision on the merits of the case. The same applies to the distribution of programmes in Germany and Austria. BSkyB has had...

In the legal dispute concerning a television film produced on the Contergan scandal by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (West German Broadcasting Corporation - WDR), the Oberlandesgericht Hamburg (Hamburg Court of Appeal) largely set aside four judgments on 10 April 2007 against the broadcasting of the film. In July 2006, Grünenthal GmbH, the former manufacturer of the drug Contergan (thalidomide) and the lawyer who represented the victims at that time obtained an interim injunction against the broadcasting of the film (see IRIS 2006-8: 12). The Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg District Court) had regarded...

Recent reports reveal that, on 21 February 2007, the Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg District Court) confirmed an interim injunction issued in December last year prohibiting the company Impressions Future Media from using certain music recordings for its on-demand service known as StayTuned.de. At the StayTuned.de platform, music titles can be selected and played for a fee. The service also comprises a choice of radio programmes and offers the possibility of “borrowing” downloads. The Deutsche Phonoverbände (German Phonographic Associations, which include the German section of the IFPI), representing...

In a judgment of 25 April 2007, the Landgericht Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf District Court) was required to rule on whether news items and texts developed in the context of journalism may be duplicated, distributed, published in an edited form, or otherwise made available to the public by third parties, either in whole or in part. A company that distributes such texts to organisations like television and radio stations and the press had sued a non-profit-making association and its chairman, claiming that its news items had been taken and published either unchanged, or in modified form, at the association’s...