A sign of confidence: The EU Member States have adopted the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield

In short:

The EU Member States have given their support to the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, a renewed framework for transatlantic data flows which is meant to replace the old “Safe Harbor”.  The decision of the Member States was mandatory in order to formally adopt the Privacy Shield in the EU.

In opposite to Safe Harbor, the Privacy Shield imposes clear and strong obligations on companies handling the date and makes sure that these rules are followed and enforced in practice. It is the first time that the United States has committed to written assurance that the access of public authorities for law enforcement and national security will be subject to clear limitations, safeguards and oversight mechanisms and has ruled out indiscriminate mass surveillance of European citizen’s personal data.

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Data flows to the US: Why the EU Model Clauses may soon be no longer state of the art

Not long after the “Safe Harbor” decision and in the same context (data transfer to the US by Facebook) the Irish Data Protection Commissioner has decided to bring the EU-US data flows before the European Court of Justice (CJEU) (again).

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WhatsApp ordered by a German court to not use English language terms and conditions towards users in Germany

A German court has recently ordered WhatsApp to use German language terms and conditions towards users in Germany (see also here, for example). Or, to be more precise, called upon by a German consumer protection agency the Kammergericht, the appellate court for the district of Berlin, has, amongst other things, decided that using English language terms and conditions for user agreements to be concluded between WhatsApp and users in Germany is in violation of a certain provision of the German Civil Code that demands there to be transparency when using pre-worded terms and conditions towards consumers. So, if you allow the pun, what’s up with that? Continue reading

“Hyperlink does Not Constitute a Copyright Infringement”

Article 3 (1) of Directive 2001/29/EC on the “harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society” legally communicating copyrighted works to the public depends on the copyright holders authorization.

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Facebook and the abuse of market power or the German Federal Cartel Office as data protection authority

The German Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) has started preliminary proceedings against Facebook in early March, trying to find out if Facebook was misusing its market power to enforce abusive terms and conditions because of alleged data protection law violations. What sounds just like what antitrust authorities do, may in fact have a huge impact on Facebook and how it is behaving against its users.

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On “warranty” and “Gewährleistung”

When drafting and negotiating technology agreements of almost any sort between German companies and US or UK companies (or companies from other common law based countries), particularly on software, one of the various Groundhog moments that one experiences is the never-ending discussion on everything that is “warranty”. Continue reading

Federal Supreme Court: Can a foreign company use a .de-domain?

In the case laid before the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof; BGH) the court primarily had to decide about the liability of the administrative contact of the domain dlg.de. However, in the obiter dictum, the court also held under which circumstances a foreign company is entitled to use a .de-domain. Continue reading

The Pope’s litigation against a German magazine

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

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