In a decision of 20 February 2025 the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) denied copyright protection as a work of applied art for two sandal designs. The ruling clarifies the scope of protection under German and EU law for works of applied art. According to the BGH, works of applied art enjoy protection if they…
On 14 January 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) heard oral arguments in the much-anticipated case C-590/23 Pelham II, where the German Federal Court submitted a request for preliminary ruling on the interpretation of “pastiche”. The purpose was to ascertain whether a two-second sample from a phonogram could fall under the…
Part 1 of this post provided an overview of the relevant provisions of the AI Act and explored enforcement via Section 823(2) of the German Civil Code. This part 2 will look at enforcement via Section 3a of the German Act Against Unfair Competition, compare the two methods of enforcement and set out some conclusions….
The EU AI Act contains some provisions that have a copyright connection. Examples are the obligation for providers of general-purpose AI models to establish a policy to respect the rights reservation in Art. 4(3) DSM Directive 2019/790 (Art. 53(1)(c) AI Act) and their obligation to provide a sufficiently detailed summary about the content used for…
There is news from Germany on the EU liability concept for indirect infringers. The German Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof – BGH) has ruled on the liability of online marketplaces for copyright infringement by their users when uploading copyright infringing photographs. This is the BGH judgment of 23 October 2024 – I ZR 112/23 – Manhattan…
In the first part of this post on the Kneschke vs. LAION decision by the German Hamburg Regional Court (“Court”), we explored the Court’s key findings regarding the operational step in a generative AI model, and the decision on the exceptions for scientific research text and data mining (“TDM”) and temporary reproductions. Now, in this…
On September 27, 2024, the German Hamburg Regional Court (“Court”) issued the first ruling on reproductions of copyrighted content from the Internet made during the creation of an AI training data set – and on whether the copyright exceptions for text and data mining (“TDM”) provide statutory permission for such use (Landgericht Hamburg, 310 O…
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…
The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) has for many years supported the move away from proprietary models of scholarly publishing towards Open Access (OA).[1] ALLEA, therefore, welcomes the recognition in the laws of an increasing number of European countries of so-called ‘Secondary Publication Rights’ (SPRs) that allow publicly funded researchers to…
On 11 September 2024, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) had to decide on the question of whether photos or videos shared online featuring in their background a photo wallpaper protected by copyright are lawful under an implied license, or if an express authorization of such reproductions is required. In three decisions of that…
