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At the end of June 2006, a case brought before the Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg district court) against the Internet search engine operator Google following an alleged breach of copyright ended when the Darmstadt-based Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (WBG) - an academic organisation that functions as a publishing company - withdrew its application for a temporary injunction during oral proceedings on the advice of the court. The legal dispute followed an argument between WBG and Google concerning the scanning, reproduction and publication of book content. Last year, Google launched a project...

Germany’s national soccer association (DFB) and Deutsche Telekom have reached an agreement on broadcasting rights for German Bundesliga soccer matches for the next three years. When Arena, a subsidiary of the cable operator Unity Media, acquired the Pay TV rights and the previous rightsholder Premiere was left empty-handed, there was disagreement about whether Deutsche Telekom, which holds the rights in respect of internet broadcasting, was also permitted to broadcast the games via internet protocol on cable and satellite, in cooperation with Premiere. This would have meant that all current Premiere...

The question as to the admissibility of advertising for private betting agencies in Germany is still not completely resolved. Even after the decision handed down by the Federal Constitutional Court (see IRIS 2006-6: 8), court rulings on the consequences that flow from the decision still differ. The regional court of Hamburg (LG Hamburg), for instance, issued an injunction on 14 June 2006 preventing the broadcasting company RTL from continuing to broadcast advertisements for a private sports betting agency. This was followed on 19 June 2006 by a decision of the first regional court of Munich (LG...

The North German Länder of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg intend in future to cooperate more closely on strengthening North Germany’s position as a location for media business. To that end, the Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg’s Governing Mayor met in Kiel on 13 June to sign a new Inter-State Media Agreement. In particular the Agreement provides for the private-broadcasting supervisory authorities of the two Länder - the Hamburgische Anstalt für die neuen Medien (Hamburg New Media Office - HAM) and Schleswig-Holstein’s Unabhängige Landesanstalt für Rundfunk und neue Medien (Independent...

The Federal Government has set the course for an overhaul of German media law. On 14 June 2006 the Cabinet approved the text of a Bill drafted by the Ministry of Economics, which aims to standardise statutory provisions for a range of information and communication services. The main component of the legislative package is the new Telemediengesetz (Telemedia Act - TMG) (see IRIS 2005-2: 9). The concept of telemedia embraces both tele- and media services - previously covered by separate regulatory systems. Teleservices were provided for at federal level in the Teledienstegesetz (Teleservices Act),...