©-LAW

Is Google responsible for the lawfulness of the images displayed through its  Images search service ? According to the German Federal Court of Justice ( Bundesgerichtshof - BGH), the answer is NO. In a judgment delivered yesterday ( I ZR 11/16 - Preview III ) the BGH relied on the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in  GS Media , C-160/15   [Katposts  here ]  and dismissed the action that the operator of a photography website had brought against Google and its search engine. Background The applicant’s website includes a restricted (password-protected) area to which customers can only access upon payment of a fee. Once there, customers are able to download the photographs placed in this area to their computers. Some of these photographs were re-uploaded unlawfully by customers onto freely accessible websites. Relevant thumbnails were subsequently indexed on Google Images from such freely accessible sites. Acc...

Miami to Ibiza ? Better: Karlsruhe ... Via Katfriend  Mathias Schindler  (Office of  MEP Julia Reda )  comes the news that today Germany's Federal Court of Justice ( Bundesgerichtshof - BGH) has referred a new copyright case to the Court of Justice of the European Union:  I ZR 228/15 -  Reformistischer Aufbruch . This is the third copyright reference from the BGH in less than two months: last month, in fact, this court referred the (long-running)  Metall auf Metall  case, and the  Afghanistan Papiere  case  [both reported  here ] . According to the relevant press release (and its Google Translate translation), similarly to the two other references mentioned above, also this new case seeks guidance on – among other things – the interplay between copyright protection and the protection of third-party rights and freedoms (including freedom of the press), as well as the proper interpretation of relevant exce...