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According to press reports, on 7 April 2006 the Landgericht Dortmund (Dortmund District Court) rejected an application by Unity Media for a temporary injunction which would have given it the right to use the decoders of pay-TV provider Premiere. The case was brought following the acquisition of broadcasting rights for the German football Bundesliga by pay-TV provider Arena, a subsidiary of Unity Media (see IRIS 2006-4: 11). Premiere AG, which had owned the rights until the current season, had cancelled an existing agreement with Unity Media, which had enabled viewers to receive programmes broadcast...

On 6 April 2006, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) ruled on the admissibility under competition law of ring tone advertising in children's magazines. The Bundesverband der Verbraucherzentralen und Verbraucherverbände (Federation of German Consumer Organisations) had complained that an advertisement for mobile phone ring tones in a children's magazine had only mentioned download costs per minute. The Federation believed that young people were unable to estimate the length of the download and the resulting overall cost. Since this information did not appear in the advertisement,...

Arena Sportrechte und Marketing GmbH, a 100% subsidiary of the largest cable network operator in North Rhine-Westphalia (Unity Media), has been granted authorisation to operate a national TV channel, "Arena Bundesliga", by the Landesanstalt für Medien Nordrhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia Media Authority - LFM). However, this decision remains subject to the approval of the Kommission zur Ermittlung der Konzentration im Medienbereich (Commission on Concentration in the Media - KEK). The KEK represents the relevant Land media authority in licensing procedures and ensures compliance with the...

In the so-called "licence fee dispute", Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF) has now turned to the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) and, on 6 March 2006, joined the appeal that was submitted to the Court by the first German public TV channel, ARD, in October 2005 (case no. 1 BvR 2270/05; see IRIS 2005-10: 10). The deadline for appeals in this matter is 31 March 2006. The appeal concerns the adoption of the 8. Rundfunkänderungsstaatsvertrag (8th Amendment to the Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement), through which the Minister-Presidents of the Länder increased the broadcasting...

In early February 2006, the Länder of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg agreed a draft inter-state agreement on media law in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. A key aspect of the agreement is the creation of a joint media authority for both Länder. This idea was criticised by the Hamburgische Anstalt für neue Medien (Hamburg new media authority - HAM) and the Unabhängige Landesanstalt für Rundfunk und neue Medien (independent regional authority for broadcasting and new media - ULR) in a statement dated 6 March 2006. The statement argued that the role of the joint media authority would essentially be...