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In a decision of 21 February 2019, the I. Zivilsenat (first civil chamber) of the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH), which is responsible for copyright-related cases, submitted to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) a number of questions concerning the scope of information that the YouTube video platform must disclose in relation to users who infringe copyright. In the case at hand, a film distributor had launched an action against YouTube LLC and its parent company, Google Inc., claiming an infringement of its exclusive rights to exploit the films “Parker” and “Scary...

In a referendum on 23 June 2016, 51.89% of UK voters decided that their country should leave the European Union. The precise conditions of the United Kingdom’s departure are still being negotiated. Only recently - on 15 January 2019 - did the British Parliament reject the Brexit agreement that Prime Minister Theresa May had negotiated with the European Union by 432 votes to 202. Fears of a ‘no deal’ or ‘hard’ Brexit without an agreement to govern the future relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom are therefore growing. A ‘hard Brexit’ would have a significant impact on the...

On 21 January 2019, the Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien (Bavarian New Media Authority - BLM), one of 14 German regional media authorities that monitor radio, television and telemedia services, announced that it had prohibited Amazon Instant Video Germany GmbH from broadcasting an episode from a German series with immediate effect because it infringed the ban on surreptitious advertising. The case concerns the German-produced sitcom “Pastewka”, which depicts the day-to-day struggles of the protagonist, Bastian Pastewka. The first seven series were broadcast by German TV channel Sat.1 until...

In a ruling of 8 January 2019, the Kammergericht Berlin (Berlin Court of Appeal - KG Berlin) addressed the question of when influencers should label social media posts as advertising. It decided that posts containing links to product providers do not generally need to be labelled as advertising. Rather, the question of whether the content of a post is functionally linked to the promotion of the company concerned should be checked on a case-by-case basis. The judgment is the first to set out principles for distinguishing between advertising and the editorial content of influencers and is relevant...

In a ruling of 31 August 2018 (Case no. 6 U 4/18), the Oberlandesgericht Köln (Cologne Regional Court of Appeal - OLG Köln) decided that domain registrars are liable for copyright infringements on filesharing platforms if they fail to shut down a domain reported by a copyright holder. The case concerned copyright breaches committed on the filesharing platform “The Pirate Bay”. The Court of Justice of the European Union had previously examined this platform in 2017 (Case no. 610/15, see IRIS 2017-7:1/4), when it had decided that the making available and management of an online filesharing platform...