Search results : 1348

The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ( Österreichischer Rundfunk - ORF) has stepped up its efforts to put an end to the relaying of its first programme, ORF1, on Deutsche Telekom AG’s cable networks in Bavaria. So far, ORF’s programme has been fed onto the Bavarian networks under a “general cable agreement”, concluded in 1991 between Deutsche Telekom, on the one hand, and ORF, Swiss television and other foreign broadcasters on the other. This gives Deutsche Telekom the right to relay foreign programmes on cable in areas where antenna reception is also possible. ORF’s action is motivated by the...

Having agreed in June 1996 to merge the German Pay-TV channels Premiere and DF1, Bertelsmann AG (CTL/UFA) and the Kirch Group have now notified the European Commission, as the authority responsible for supervising mergers under the Concentrations Control Regulation (Regulation (EEC) No. 4064/89 of 21 December 1989 on the control of concentrations between undertakings). The Commission will shortly be considering whether the merger, which is of Community significance, is compatible with Article 2 of the Regulation. At the same time, the Investigating Committee on Media Concentrations (Kommission...

The act on the use of standards for the transmission of television signals - the Television Signal Transmission Act (Gesetz über die Anwendung von Normen für die Übertragung von Fernsehsignalen - Fernsehsignalübertragungs-Gesetz - FÜG) - came into force on 25 November 1997, incorporating Directive 95/47/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union of 24 October 1995 on the use of standards for the transmission of television signals (the TV Standards Directive - see IRIS 1996-2: 5) into national law. The rules embodied in the new Act largely coincide with those laid down in...

On 29 August 1997, the Hamburg Regional Court (Landgericht Hamburg) rejected an action brought by 70 members of FreeLens, a press photographers' association, against the news magazine Der Spiegel. The applicants complained at the re-publication on CD-ROM, without their specific permission, of photographs originally published in Der Spiegel between 1989 and 1993. Under the transfer of purpose principle (Section 31 (5) of the Copyright Act), the spatial and temporal scope of globally assigned rights is determined by the purpose specified in the contract. Provided that the use in question was known...

In a judgment given at last instance on 11 December 1997 - KVR 7/96 - the Monopolies Division of the Federal Court (Kartellsenat des Bundesgerichtshofs - BGH) upheld the Federal Cartel Office's (Bundeskartellamt) decision forbidding the German Football Association (Deutscher Fußball Bund - DFB) to centralise the marketing of television rights to the home matches of German teams competing for the European Cup and the European Cup-Winners' Cup. The association's application for permission to establish a cartel for rationalisation purposes, in accordance with Section 5, para. 2 and 3, in conjunction...