Search results : 1372

In a ruling of 6 February 2014, the First Civil Chamber of the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) decided that copyright claims are not, in principle, forfeited if rightsholders do not assert their rights over a period of many years (case no. I ZR 86/12). The plaintiffs had filed for an injunction and compensation against a broadcaster. The dispute concerned the use of images filmed by cameraman Herbert Ernst showing Peter Fechter’s attempted escape from the GDR, which the defendant had broadcast in programmes such as the Berliner Abendschau on 13 August 2010. The plaintiffs claimed...

The new Staatsvertrag über den Südwestrundfunk (Inter-State Agreement on Südwestrundfunk, the public service broadcaster for the Länder of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate - SWR-StV), entered into force on 1 January 2014. The purpose of the new agreement is to guarantee a strong, properly functioning SWR in a digitised media world for a younger, trimedial audience. To this end, the agreement gives SWR greater flexibility to create its own business structure and develop multimedia forms of organisation. SWR’s new legal framework in particular makes provision for the clarification of its...

According to media reports, the Oberlandesgericht Oldenburg (Oldenburg Appeal Court - OLG) fined the online service of a major daily newspaper EUR 10,000 in a ruling of 10 December 2013. The portal had published video footage of a police operation in which the faces of the police officers involved had not been pixellated. The videos showed a person being arrested during a police operation at a disco in Bremen on 23 June 2013. The police officers’ faces were clearly visible. A temporary injunction was issued against the online service on 26 August 2013, ordering it to make the officers unrecognisable. The...

In its final judgment of 12 November 2013 (case no. 3 U 348/13), the Oberlandesgericht Nürnberg (Nuremberg Appeal Court - OLG) ruled that an application for an injunction against a company, and for reimbursement of the cost of issuing a caution following a breach of the obligation to publish legal information on an Internet platform (in this case, Facebook), was inadmissible under Article 8(4) of the Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (Unfair Competition Act - UWG) if, taking all the circumstances into account, it represented an abuse of the law. The court considered that an abuse of the law...

In a decision of 20 December 2013, the Oberlandesgericht Köln (Cologne Appeal Court - OLG) rejected a complaint from 11 newspaper publishers about the Tagesschau app (case no. 6 U 188/12), which it ruled was an admissible media service. The Landgericht Köln (Cologne District Court - LG Köln) had upheld the complaint in the first instance (ruling of 27 September 2012, case no. 31 O 360/11, see IRIS 2012-10/8). The LG Köln had decided that the Tagesschau app was different from the “tagesschau.de” website and that it breached Article 11d(2)(3) of the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Agreement on...