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On 26 November 2018, the EU Commission initiated proceedings for infringement of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union against 17 member states for non-compliance with the Directive requiring the transposition into national law of the Marrakesh Treaty (Directive (EU) 2017/1564) (see IRIS 2017-9/4 and IRIS 2016-9/4). The Marrakesh Treaty is a WIPO-administered convention that was signed on 27 June 2013 and entered into force on 30 September 2016, after the first 20 ratifications. The Treaty facilitates access to print works in formats adapted for persons who are blind, visually impaired...

In a new judgment with regard to Internet content, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found that a criminal conviction for insult was a justified interference with the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The case of Annen (No. 6) v. Germany concerns a conviction for posting a press release on the Internet and distributing leaflets with insulting statements about a German professor at the University of Bonn, professor B., who was conducting embryonic stem cell research. Annen is a campaigner against abortion and...

On 20 September 2018, a week after issuing its YouTube decision (IRIS 2018-9/10), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court – BGH) decided to refer a similar set of questions to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) concerning the liability of a shared web hosting service for copyright infringements (Case no. I ZR 53/17 – Uploaded). The case follows a dispute between book and music publishers and the shared hosting service Uploaded, which offers free storage space for anyone to upload files that can, in principle, be downloaded free of charge by other users. Registered users can pay for higher...

In a decision of 12 July 2018 (Case no. I ZB 86/17), which was published on 28 September 2018, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) ruled that a broadcaster had fulfilled its obligations by removing a TV programme from its online media library and taking steps to ensure that it could not be retrieved from the cache of common search engines, and in particular from Google. The case concerned a television programme broadcast in April 2017 by public service broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) which had been the subject of a preliminary injunction on account of infringements of the...

In his opinion delivered on 26 September 2018 in Case C-492/17, Advocate General Manuel Campos Sánchez-Bordona proposed that the Court of Justice declare that the amendment of the event triggering the chargeability of the broadcasting fee used to finance public service broadcasting in Germany does not constitute unlawful state aid. In a 2007 ruling, the Commission had stated that the method for financing public service broadcasting in Germany - then known as the ‘Rundfunkgebühr’ (broadcasting fee) - could be classified as ‘existing aid’ within the meaning of EU law. This means that the aid existed...