Author Archives: Ansgar Koreng

The Pope’s litigation against a German magazine

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The following is certainly not really a matter of IT-Law but I bet you will find it interesting anyway.

This post is about a law suit Pope Benedict XVI. started against Titanic (nice case reference, isn’t it?), a well-known German satire magazine. We all expected today a hearing to take place at the Hamburg Regional Court – but it was canceled just last night, as the Pope had withdrawn his petition.

It has already been written a lot on whether this case is an example for censorship or some kind of litmus test for the freedom of speech in Germany. I don’t think that this really what makes the case so interesting. I believe that the question we should discuss is whether a pope should defend his personality rights by going to a civil court. Continue reading →

The abroad service of preliminary injunctions according to German law

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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 Third Party (Internet) Content under German Law

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One of the core problems of German Internet law today is the question of whether, and, if yes, under which conditions, Internet providers of all kinds can be held liable for content published by their users (or embedded by them). The issue arises for content communities (think YouTube), Internet forums, blogs (thing embedded content and user comments), wikis, social networking sites (you know who), but poses the same questions for “generic” host providers or sharehosters (I hardly dare write the word). Continue reading →