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In a decision of 21 February 2017 (case no. 4 Ob 137/16z), the Oberste Gerichtshof (Supreme Court) ruled that the courts of the state in which satellite broadcasts are received have jurisdiction to hear complaints about copyright breaches relating to works from the catalogue of a collecting society based in the receiving state. An Austrian collecting society filed a complaint with the national courts about a Luxembourg-based company, claiming an injunction and financial compensation because the company had offered customers in Austria access to encrypted and unencrypted television programmes broadcast...

On 16 March 2017, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in AKM v. Zürs.net, concerning copyright and retransmission of broadcasts of a public broadcaster by a local cable network. The case arose following a dispute between the Austrian copyright collecting society AKM, and Zürs.net, which is a cable network operator that transmits television and radio broadcasts made initially by the Austrian national broadcaster ORF. Zurs.net had approximately 130 subscribers. AKM requested that Zürs.net provide it with the number of subscribers connected to its cable network,...

On 17 August 2016 the media regulator KommAustria established that the online offering of the public service broadcaster ORF contained elements that could not be regarded as content accompanying a programme, and accordingly breach the ORF Act. The live-sport portal Laola 1 Multimedia GmbH filed a complaint against the ORF service sport.ORF.at, including its Sports App, and against the online partial service sport.ORF.at/fussball, including its Football App, claiming that both the online reporting and the apps breached the ORF Act. KommAustria partially upheld the complaint, ruling that several...

On 21 April 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) delivered its judgment in Austro-Mechana v. Amazon EU and Others (Case C-572/14), concerning the jurisdiction of Austrian courts to hear legal proceedings where an Austrian copyright-collecting society seeks to obtain payment from Amazon EU for a recording device levy under Austrian copyright law (see IRIS 2013-9/3 for a related judgment). Under paragraph 42b of the Austrian copyright law (Urheberrechtgesetz - UrhG), persons who are “first to place” certain recording equipment on the market, are required to pay “fair remuneration”...

On 2 December 2015, the Vienna Commercial Court referred a question to the ECJ on the concept of “communication to the public” in copyright law, in proceedings for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU. The reason for the referral was an action brought by the Austrian collecting society Verwertungsgesellschaft Rundfunk (VGR) against a hotel operator for a breach of broadcasting rights. The hotel management provides TV sets in the hotel rooms by means of which the signals of several television and radio programmes can be seen and heard (so-called “hotel room TV”). The room price per night...