Update: Second Proposal for a New Neighboring Right for Press Publishers Released

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Julia Gebert

A while ago we reported that the German Federal Ministry of Justice (BMJ, Bundesjustizministerium) published a proposal for the implementation of a new neighboring right for press publishers.

Last Friday, a second draft for implementing such a new neighboring right into the German Copyright Code has been published by the Ministry. Compared to the first draft, the scope of the new neighboring right is far more limited: according to the new draft press publishers will only have a claim for remuneration against search engine companies. Other users like bloggers, companies other than press publishers or law firms would not need to obtain a license from the press publisher if they make available a press product. Continue reading →

Update: Liability for the child’s copyright infringement

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Miriam Ballhausen

Three weeks after the Higher Regional Court of Cologne (Oberlandesgericht, OLG Köln, decision of 06/04/2012 – 6 W 81/12 – we reported) found parents to be obliged to control what their children are doing online, even if the children are of age, the Regional Court of Hamburg (Landgericht Hamburg, LG Hamburg, decision of 06/21/2012 – 308 O 495/11) now held the parent’s obligation to control their grown children to be “unreasonable”. ”. According to the judges in Hamburg, parents can rely on their grown children knowing what they are doing online and knowing if they are infringing copyrights. Therefore, parents can neither be held responsible for not instructing their grown children how to “behave” online, nor for not checking up on what their children are doing online. The obligation to control children of age is found to contradict the “family’s bonds” in cases where there has not been prior reason to believe the child is infringing third party’s copyrights. In addition, a child of age cannot be expected to respect such parental control.

New leading cases on the destiny of sub-licenses when the main license is terminated

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

Are sub-licenses affected when the main license they are derived from ceases to exist? Last week, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) issued two decisions dealing with this question and answered with an unequivocal “No”. No written opinion has been published yet (this usually takes a while) so that we have only the official German press release to rely on. But this press release reveals already a few pretty interesting and important things. Continue reading →

The abroad service of preliminary injunctions according to German law

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Ansgar Koreng

According to German law the service of judgments and other official documents normally is being done by the court. But since there’s no rule without exception, the service of preliminary injunctions has to be done by the applicant himself. Usually, he has to give it to a bailiff who has to bring it to the opponent. As you might imagine, this requirement could be quite hard to meet if the opponent is abroad. This is why the German civil procedure says that in such cases the court itself has to serve the injunction. But how does it work? Continue reading →

Liability for the spouse’s or child’s copyright infringement

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Miriam Ballhausen

Under German civil law copyright infringements through filesharing can basically be pursued in two ways. On the one hand, it is obviously possible to pursue claims against the person who actually makes the copyrighted material accessible via internet. This person may be the actual perpetrator of the copyright infringement or someone who deliberately aids and abets the perpetrator committing the copyright infringement. On the other hand, right holders can also try to catch any person who – without being the actual infringer/ abettor –contributed to someone else’s copyright infringement in any way. The courts have repeatedly found such third parties responsible for copyright infringements (see, for example, Federal Supreme Court aka Bundesgerichtshof aka BGH, decision of 11/03/2004 – 1 ZR 304/01 and decision of 04/19/2007 – I ZR 35/04). Continue reading →

German Federal Supreme Court on file hoster responsibility for third party content – “Rapidshare”

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

The German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) delivered yesterday a decision on file hosters‘ duties regarding copyright infringements committed by their users (more on the general topic of the responsibility for third party content here and here). The written opinion is not published yet, but here is a short summary of the German press release. Continue reading →

German Parliament Considering the Future of Open Source Software

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Dr. Till Jaeger

In 2010, the German Parliament set up a commission of enquiry (“Enquete-Kommission”) on “Internet and Digital Society” that looks at future strategies in this field of policy (http://www.bundestag.de/internetenquete/Hintergrund_Enquete/). The idea behind such commissions, which have existed and exist in a number of other fields as well, is to collect and evaluate information about the impact of technical, economic and social developments in the relevant fields to provide the Parliament with recommendations for its further political decisions.

The Internet and Digital Society commission just recently turned to a topic of the highest importance for the use and development of digital technologies when it decided to form – among several others – a project group called “Interoperability, Standards, Open Source”. Continue reading →

The ECJ surprises in Oracle v. UsedSoft

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Tim Engelhardt

Yesterday, the European Court of Justice handed down its ruling in Oracle v. UsedSoft. The court followed largely the Advocate General’s trail (we reported), but at some – crucial – point, it took a different, rather surprising direction which will have considerable impact on the marketing of software (and maybe other copyright-protected works, too). Continue reading →

YouTube v. GEMA Decision by Hamburg District Court

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Julian Hoeppner

After having uploaded quite some posts about how liability for third party Internet content works in German law, and having done so in rather abstract terms (in part, admittedly, for shying away from translating dozens of pages of court decisions) here is a good example of how it works in practice. A colleague from Italy has thankfully posted an English translation of the YouTube v. GEMA decision of the Hamburg District Court of April 20, 2012 on his blog. Continue reading →

German IT Law

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Monthly Archives: July 2012