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The provisions on the protection of minors contained in Article 22 of the EC "Television without Frontiers" Directive (97/36/EC) are to be transposed into German law through the corresponding regulations of §3 of the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Agreement between the Federal States on BroadcastingRfStV) as set out in the 4. Rundfunkänderungsstaatsvertrag (4th Agreement to Amend the Agreement between the Federal States on Broadcasting), due to enter into force on 1 April 2000 (see IRIS 1999-5: 11). Paragraph 3.4 of the Agreement states that programmes which, in accordance with sub-paragraphs 1-3, may...

In a judgement of 15 September 1999, the 1st Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court (BundesgerichtshofBGH) ruled that translations of dialogue in comics are protected by copyright law as original pieces of work. The Court therefore upheld the complaint of a translator who, on behalf of a publishing company, translated seventy volumes of Walt Disney comic Lustige Taschenbücher from Italian into German between 1976 and 1994. The reason for her complaint was the fact that the publishing company had reprinted the works translated by the applicant up to twelve times without her express agreement. Moreover,...

In two judgements of 1 December 1999, the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof - BGH) decided to award the heirs of deceased prominent figures the right to an injunction and, for the first time, compensation for unauthorised commercial use of images of the deceased. In the first case, the producer of the musical "Marlene" had allowed a car manufacturer to bring out a "Marlene" model and had given permission for a cosmetics producer to advertise the so-called "Marlene-Look" using a portrait of Marlene Dietrich. He also arranged the production and sale of merchandise bearing a picture of Marlene...

A year-long dispute between the Federal Film Support Institute (Filmförderungsanstalt - FFA) on the one hand and the Federal Video Association (Bundesverband Video - BVV) and the Association of German Video and Media Retailers (Interessensverband des Video- und Medienfachhandels in Deutschland - IVD) on the other, concerning the outstanding payment of video levies, has been settled out of court. The case, brought before the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) and several Administrative Courts, concerned the obligation of video manufacturers, under § 66a of the Film Support...

In a decision of 12 October 1999, the Hamburg Court of Appeal (Oberlandesgericht - OLG) ruled that, during the investigative stages of a television programme, there could be no justification for an injunction against the subsequent broadcast of the material gathered. The applicant wanted to prevent the defendant from broadcasting pictures of his house and interviews with tenants. However, the Court decided that the film in question was raw material which needed to be processed by the programme editor. It was still unclear whether and to what extent the aforementioned pictures would be used in...