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Satellite operator Eutelsat lodged a complaint with the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf Court of Appeal - OLG) concerning a decision of the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office) at the end of 2004. According to the decision, the acquisition of the company Digital Playout Center (DPC), owned by pay-TV provider Premiere, by satellite operator SES Astra (see IRIS 2005-2: 8), had been authorised. Now, in an interim decision of 22 February 2006, the 1. Kartellsenat (1st Cartels Court) of the OLG has invited the Bundeskartellamt to obtain from market participants additional information that...

In a ruling of 23 February 2006, the Landgericht München I (Munich District Court I) declared that certain clauses of a pay-TV provider's general terms of business were invalid and it therefore granted an injunction sought by the Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (Federation of German Consumer Organisations - vzbv ). In its terms of business, the pay-TV company concerned, Premiere , had reserved the right "to supplement or expand, for the benefit of subscribers", its range of programmes, individual channels, their use and the composition of programme packages. The court considered this to be an...

The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office), Germany's competition authority, has expressed reservations concerning the plan of RTL Television GmbH Deutschland to acquire sole ownership of news channel n-tv . RTL, which currently owns 50% of the shares in n-tv Nachrichtenfernsehen GmbH & Co. KG, is planning to purchase the remaining 50% from CNN/Time Warner. The Bundeskartellamt claims that the merger would affect the whole television advertising market in Germany. Together with ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, the Luxembourg-based RTL Group already holds a so-called collective dominant market position,...

On 31 January 2006, the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie (Federal Ministry for Business and Technology) published a new draft law amending current telecommunications legislation. An amendment to the Telecommunications Act had already been agreed by the Bundestag in June 2005, but was never adopted because of the drafting in of a mediation committee and the premature end of the parliamentary term. One new addition to the draft agreed in 2005 concerns the regulation of "new markets", which is explained in Art. 9(a). According to this provision, new markets should only be covered by...

On 26 January 2006, following the publication of a revised Bill, the Bundesjustizministerium (Federal Ministry of Justice) organised a hearing for interested parties on the second wave of copyright law reforms. Since the first wave of copyright law amendments transposed into German law the binding provisions of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Information Society in 2003 (see IRIS 2003-9: 13), no further regulations have followed. A draft for the second wave was published in September 2004, but was not adopted during the parliamentary term ended autumn 2005. The new revised draft concentrates...