Search results : 1348

In a recently published judgment of 17 January 2019 (Case no. 12 O 1982/2018), the Landgericht München (Munich district court) decided that customers were unreasonably disadvantaged by a unilateral, groundless change to programme packages sold by pay-TV provider Sky Deutschland. In its terms of business, the pay-TV provider had reserved the right to change or limit programme packages and services as long as their ‘overall character’ was not affected. The terms of business also stated that the programme content of sports channels was seasonal and could vary depending on the availability of broadcasting...

In a recently published decision of 18 December 2018 (Case no. 5 B 229/18), the Sächsische Oberverwaltungsgericht Bautzen (Saxony Higher Administrative Court Bautzen - OVG) ruled that, if a competitor’s complaint about the allocation of broadcast transmission capacity appears unlikely to succeed, the public interest in the provisional allocation of transmission capacity takes precedence over the competitor’s interest in suspending the implementation of the allocation decision. Although the decision concerns radio transmission capacity, it contains important general principles for the allocation...

On 27 March 2019, following applications from two people who are required to pay the German broadcasting contribution (cases BVerwG 6 C 5.18 and 6 C 6.18), the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) decided that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) should rule on whether the broadcasting contribution can and should be payable in cash. The decision primarily concerns the interpretation of the concept of legal tender and the scope of the European Union’s exclusive jurisdiction over monetary policy. In Germany, the obligation for private individuals to pay the...

The Gesetz zur Verbesserung der Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken (Act to improve law enforcement in social networks - NetzDG), which is designed to force social networks to deal more quickly and more comprehensively with complaints about hate crime and other criminal content, entered into force in Germany on 1 October 2017 (see IRIS 2018-1/15). Under the Act, social networks must ensure, through an effective and transparent procedure, that complaints are immediately noted and checked, and that illicit content is deleted within specified deadlines. Social network providers that receive...

On 6 February 2019, the Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartels Office - BKartA) issued a prohibition notice against Facebook Inc. (USA), Facebook Ireland Ltd. and Facebook Germany GmbH, primarily concerning their plans to combine user data from Facebook-owned services. On competition law grounds, Facebook was prohibited in particular from allowing private users resident in Germany to use its social network only if it could assign data collected from its other services - WhatsApp, Oculus, Masquerade and Instagram -  and from third-party websites that contain Facebook interfaces to their Facebook account...