The German Regional Court (Landgericht) of Hamburg handed down its judgment in the LAION case on 27 September 2024 (file no. 310 O 227/23, published in German here). The key points of the decision are as follows: The reproduction of works for the purpose of creating URL lists that can be used for artificial…
Part I of this annual post reporting on the copyright case law of the German Bundesgerichtshof covered decisions in the areas of copyright protection and exploitation rights, as well as exceptions and limitations. Part II will focus on copyright contract law and claims under copyright law. IV. Copyright contract law (Sections 31 et seqq….
This article continues the tradition of reporting on the copyright case law of the German Bundesgerichtshof, the highest German civil court for copyright matters (Federal Court of Justice – “BGH”). This article summarises the most important BGH copyright decisions in 2022 as well as selected lower-court case law. Readers may find it useful to consult…
New year’s fatigue? Or possibly AI fatigue? But the new year has only just begun! It does seem like the topic of AI and copyright was everywhere in the copyright world last year. While some digital topics have been known to cause a great commotion in copyright circles only to later sink practically without a…
2021 saw a very active German Bundesgerichtshof (“BGH” – Federal Supreme Court) in the area of copyright law. This article covers the most relevant copyright law decisions of the BGH from that year. Part I addressed decisions in the areas of scope of protection, exploitation rights, exceptions and limitations, and copyright contract law. Part II…
The implementation transposition of the Copyright Directive 2019/790 (DSMD) in the summer of 2021 represented probably the greatest reform in German copyright law since the German Copyright Act (UrhG) came into force. Germany’s implementation of Art. 17 DSMD was discussed in an earlier blog post by Julian Waiblinger and Jonathan Pukas. The other changes to…
The decisions of the BGH (German Federal Court of Justice) in “YouTube II”, “uploaded II” and “uploaded III” have changed things, at least for hosting providers, in one key aspect: hosting providers can now be (indirectly) liable for the copyright infringements committed by their users, if those hosting providers violate duties of care. This post…
Part I of this post discussed the changes to copyright contract law and the new text and data mining exemption provisions that formed part of the 2021 copyright law reform. Part 2 explores further exemptions for users of works, new aspects of the right of communication to the public and the press publishers’ right. It…
In the last year, the German Copyright Act has experienced what is probably its most substantial reform since it first came into force in 1966. The reason for this was the implementation of the DSM Copyright Directive 2019/790/EU (DSMD) and Directive 2019/789/EU (Online SatCab Directive). Secondly, the legislature felt obliged, in response to certain CJEU…
According to Article 16 EU DSM Directive 2019/790 (“DSM Directive”), a “publisher” may have a claim to a share of the author’s statutory remuneration claims – such as fair compensation for private copies – if the author has granted the “publisher” a right in his work. But who is this “publisher”? After the adoption of…
