The Berlin Court of Appeals has ruled that WhatsApp’s Terms and Conditions do not bind German consumers, as long as they are available only in English and as long as there is no German version or translation (Kammergericht, Urteil vom 08.04.2016, Az. 5 U 156/14, link to the full decision on the Verbraucherzentrale website).
Valve Corporation, the operator of the popular Steam online games platform, successfully withstood some pressure in Germany. Starting in 2013, the Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband, an important German consumer protection organization, filed a law suit against Valve for alleged violation of consumer rights. The subject matter of the complaint was a clause in the terms and conditions […]
In December 2015, the local district court of Berlin decreed that Facebook must grant the heirs of a deceased user access to the deceased’s Facebook account (Landgericht Berlin, Urteil vom 17.12.2015, Az. 20 O 172/15).
The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) has ruled that in cases of counterfeit and pirated goods, banks may be obliged under the law to disclose the identity, name and address of the account holder involved in the sale. The decision was handed down on 21 October 2015, following an earlier preliminary ruling by […]
Following a controversial court decision, there has been some uproar recently in the German online industry and legal circles in regard to email newsletters. The Munich Court of Appeals has passed a ruling according to which even a formal newsletter confirmation email a may be considered illegal spam (OLG München, 27.09.2012 – 29 U 1682/12, […]
A couple of days ago the German Federal Court of Justice has handed down an interesting decision regarding the question whether an individual may demand that his name be deleted from press articles in publicly available online newspaper archives, if the matter reported is long in the past and no longer currently relevant (Bundesgerichtshof, Urteil […]
The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) has handed down a decision which shines a light on a curious aspect of trademark law. In the case which was decided on 12 March 2015, German automaker BMW had sued a company which had produced and sold replica badges with the famous BMW sign, namely the […]
Der Bundesgerichtshof hat Ende Juli 2012 zwei Urteile gefällt, mit denen die Rechtssicherheit bei Lizenzketten deutlich erhöht wird. In den beiden Entscheidungen, die am selben Tag fielen, ging es um die Frage, was mit Unterlizenzen passiert, die ein Lizenznehmer an weitere Unternehmen vergeben hat, wenn die Hauptlizenz später wegfällt.
Bei der Entwicklung von Software und softwarebasierten Produkten aller Art wird oftmals auf Open-Source-Software zurückgegriffen. Das können Tools sein ebenso wie eingesetzte Bibliotheken, das kann ein Entwicklungstool sein ebenso wie die Firmware in einem Endgerät, Grafikengine oder Objekte in einem Computerspiel, Online-Game usw.
Das Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf hat kurz vor dem Jahresende 2011 eine für Künstler und Fotografen, Galerien und Museen interessante Entscheidung getroffen. (OLG Düsseldorf, Urteil vom 30.12.2011, Az. I 20 U 101/09)
