Search results : 1375

The European Court of Human Rights has delivered a new judgment regarding a complaint by Princess Caroline von Hannover that the German courts had not sufficiently protected her right to privacy as guaranteed by Article 8 of the Convention, by giving too much weight to the right of the press as guaranteed by Article 5 of the German Constitution and Article 10 of the European Convention (see earlier also Von Hannover no. 1 v. Germany, IRIS 2004-8/2 and Von Hannover no. 2 v. Germany, IRIS 2012-3/1). This time the Princess of Monaco lodged an appeal in Strasbourg relating to the refusal by the German...

On 7 June 2013, the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament) adopted the Achtes Gesetz zur Änderung des Gesetzes gegen Wettbewerbsbeschränkungen (Eighth Act Amending the Restraints on Competition Act - 8. GWB-ÄndG) (see IRIS 2012-4/100), which entered into force on 30 June 2013. Under the new version of the GWB, the ban on anti-competitive agreements does not apply to industry agreements between press publishing houses and press wholesalers. However, a condition of this exemption is that, under the agreements, press wholesalers distribute newspapers and magazines to retailers in a comprehensive, non-discriminatory...

In a ruling of 14 August 2013, the Landgericht Köln (Cologne District Court - LG) decided that advertising using a double of a famous person can be inadmissible even if there is no similarity between the facial features and external appearance of the double and the famous person. The famous person may be recognisable thanks to other details that characterise the person concerned. The complaint concerned a TV commercial for the defendant, a furniture store, which included a scene from a TV quiz show in which a presenter wearing glasses and a dark suit had asked a contestant the “all-important question”...

In a summary procedure, the Verwaltungsgericht Berlin (Berlin Administrative Court - VG) decided on 5 September 2013 (case no. VG 27 L 217.13) to refuse a request to inspect a study commissioned by the Bundesministerium des Innern (Federal Interior Ministry - BMI). It ruled that press information rights did not include such extensive access to official documents. A journalist from a daily newspaper had contacted the Bundesministerium des Innern and, as a member of the press, asserted a claim to receive information under Article 4(1) of the Berliner Pressegesetz (Berlin Press Act - BerlPrG), which...

In its decision of 17 July 2013, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Supreme Court - BGH) ruled that the copyright protection afforded under the Urheberrechtsgesetz (Copyright Act - UrhG) to books and stories, for example, also applied to literary characters. In the case at hand, the court decided that the children’s character “Pippi Longstocking” created by Astrid Lindgren was copyright protected as a “work of language” in the sense of Article 2(1)(1) UrhG. The combination of external features and specific personality traits justified the protection of a fictional character. The decision was based...