Search results : 1348

In a ruling of 31 October 2014 (case no. 6 U 60/14), the Oberlandesgericht Köln (Cologne Court of Appeal - OLG) decided that the publication of a photograph on the Deutschlandradio website did not represent commercial use for the purposes of the Creative Commons licence (CC licence). The plaintiff, a photographer, had offered his photographs for public use under the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 licence (CC-BY-NC). After the defendant, a public corporation that operates the Deutschlandradio radio station, had made one of the plaintiff’s photographs publicly...

In a ruling of 25 September 2014 (case no. 6 U 111/14), the Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt am Main Court of Appeal - OLG) decided that the advertising slogan for a mobile phone tariff, “Immer Netz ... hat der Netzer” (the network never fails the networker), was not a misleading statement for the purposes of Article 5(1)(1) of the Gesetz gegen unlauteren Wettbewerb (Act against Unfair Competition - UWG) concerning the essential characteristics of a service. The defendant, a telecommunications company, had advertised its service as follows: “Immer Fisch hat … der Fischer. Immer Glas...

In a ruling of 27 November 2014 (case no. I ZR 124/1), which is yet to be published in full, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) decided that technical measures to protect video games are themselves protected under Article 95a of the Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act - UrhG). The plaintiff, as rightsholder, produces and sells the Nintendo DS video game console as well as video games available exclusively on memory cards that are only suitable for use on this console, which are inserted into a memory card slot. The defendant sells adapters for the console on the internet that are...

In a ruling of 18 November 2014 (case no. VI ZR 76/14), the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) decided that a person about whom suspicion-based reports are published but who is later found innocent cannot demand that the original reports be corrected. However, he can ask the medium responsible to publish a subsequent report, explaining that the suspicions, which were lawfully published, later turned out to be false. Although the defendant in this case was a newspaper publisher, the ruling also applies to suspicion-based reporting in the audiovisual media sector. The case concerned...

On 16 October 2014, the Landeszentrale für Medien und Kommunikation Rheinland-Pfalz (Rhineland-Palatinate Media and Communication Office - LMK) announced that it had lodged an appeal with the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - aBVerfG) against the judgment of the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (Federal Administrative Court - BVerwG) of 23 July 2014 (case no. 6 C 31.13). The BVerwG had ruled (see IRIS 2014-9/14) that the depiction of a brand of beer at the “Hasseröder Männercamp” before and after the live broadcast of a football match on the Sat.1 television channel did not constitute...