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In an as yet unpublished decision of 14 May 2013, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) ruled on the admissibility of Google “autocomplete” suggestions that breach personality rights. Google uses a so-called “autocomplete” function, which automatically shows users various suggested search terms in the form of word combinations as they enter search items in its search engine. In the case at hand, a businessman applied for an injunction to stop Google showing his full name as part of the “autocomplete” function with the words “Scientology” and “Betrug” (the German word for “fraud”)...

In an as yet unpublished decision of 16 May 2013, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) submitted to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) a request for a preliminary ruling concerning the admissibility, under copyright law, of embedding online videos. The case concerned a company’s advertising video lasting approximately two minutes, which could be watched without the company’s permission via the online video platform YouTube. Two independent sales representatives of a competitor had embedded the video on their websites so it could be downloaded from the video platform’s...

In a ruling of 31 March 2013 (case no. 1 BvR 1314/11), the Third Chamber of the First Senate of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court - BVerfG) found a landlord’s decision to ban the installation of a satellite dish incompatible with the basic right to freedom of information if it failed to take the specific situation of linguistic and cultural minorities sufficiently into account. The appellants are Turkish nationals of Turkmen descent and mother tongue, who live in Germany. Without their landlord’s permission, they brought a satellite dish to their rented flat in order to...

At the beginning of March 2013, the Landesmedienanstalten (regional media authorities) published the revised version of the Gemeinsame Richtlinien für die Werbung, die Produktplatzierung, das Sponsoring und das Teleshopping im Fernsehen (Joint Guidelines on Advertising, Product Placement, Sponsorship and Teleshopping on Television), which came into force on 22 February 2013. Authorised to issue such guidelines under Article 46 of the Rundfunkstaatsvertrag (Inter-State Broadcasting Agreement - RStV), the media authorities have therefore put the advertising rules contained in the RStV in concrete...

On 1 February 2013, the Werberichtlinie (Advertising Directive - WerbeRL), designed to put the Staatsvertrag zum Glücksspielwesen in Deutschland (Inter-State Gambling Agreement - GlüStV) into concrete form, entered into force. It had been adopted on 7 December 2012 by the Glücksspielkollegium (Gambling Commission) which, in accordance with Article 9a(5) to (8) of the Inter-State Gambling Agreement, is composed of representatives of all 16 gambling supervisory authorities and acts on behalf of the regional authorities. Under Article 5(3)(1) GlüStV in conjunction with Articles 7 and 2(2)(7) of the...