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

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

Who May Photograph Your Cow?

Imagine, you own a cow. Someone comes to your farm, takes a photo of your cow, leaves, and a few weeks later you find this photo on some commercial website. Can you do anything against it? Do you have an exclusive right to make and distribute photos of your cow? The Local Court of Cologne decided on this situation two years ago and said: No, taking photographs of someone’s cow does not infringe on any exclusive rights of the cow’s owner, and a photographer may publish photos taken of this cow.

I mention this because a three-week old decision by the District Court of Berlin (Landgericht Berlin) I just read reminded me of this curious case. However, it seems that (absurdly) the Berlin court would have ruled in favor of the cow’s owner. Let’s take a look: Continue reading