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In a judgement of 7 December 1999, the Bundesgerichtshof (the Federal Supreme Court - BGH) dismissed a claim for damages lodged in relation to a report that named a public official who was suspected of committing a crime. The newspaper concerned had, inter alia, reported in the lead article of its local section, under the headline "Ex-employee under strong suspicion", the introduction of criminal proceedings against the applicant, whose name had been mentioned in the article. The applicant argued that the article infringed her personality rights and constituted a prejudgement which, in accordance...

On 31 March, the Landgericht Hamburg (Hamburg District Court) confirmed that a (print) news magazine must pay damages to a bank following the broadcast of a television advertisement (see IRIS 1997-9: 6). In an advertisement for the latest edition of the magazine, the editor said, "Many people might lose their money". The report itself did not deal with the bank's financial situation, however, but questioned the reliability of its then chairman. Even the cover page of the magazine contained the headline, "Hamburg private bank in trouble: customers fear for their money". A few days after the magazine...

In a ruling of 3 March 2000 (case no. 10 O 457/99), the Landgericht Bonn (Bonn District Court) decided that an Internet user could only be banned from a chatroom if he or she had expressly broken the common code of conduct (known as "chatiquette"). The District Court rejected the application of a chatroom operator, who had wanted to ban the defendant from his virtual business premises. The defendant had been involved in an argument with another chatroom user. The applicant prohibited the defendant from using his chatroom, but the latter subsequently ignored the ban. The applicant claimed that,...

There have been some important legal developments in the field of business TV and Internet radio in Germany recently. While n-tv has been operating a business television station for a large German bank since the beginning of April, Deutsche Telekom AG started its own "Telekom-TV" channel at the CeBIT 2000 exhibition. Furthermore, at the end of February, Chart-Radio, previously only available on the Internet, was awarded a licence by the Baden-Württemberg Landesmedienanstalt für Kommunikation (Regional Communications Authority - LfK). Both business-TV and Internet radio must be classified as teleservices,...

Following the decision of the Landgericht Mainz (Mainz District Court - LG) of 23 March 2000, the television broadcaster SAT.1 may finally show the programme Der Fall Lebach ("The Lebach Case"), which was supposed to be the pilot film of the series Verbrechen, die Geschichte machten ("Crimes that made history"). The judgement followed different rulings by the Oberlandesgerichte Saarbrücken & Koblenz (Saarbrücken and Koblenz Courts of Appeal) and a decision by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - BVerfG) (see IRIS 2000-1: 9). The Federal Constitutional Court had lifted the...