Links & Law - Information about legal aspects of search engines, linking and framing

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 Update 6: April 21, 2003

1. Newsclub lawsuit is over 

The inventor of NewsClub had been sued for linking to the plaintiff's news articles. In January 2001, NewsClub had won an interim injunction at a Berlin court.  Nevertheless, plaintiff managed to move the lawsuit to Munich regional court, and won. The decision was appealed at first but the appeal was withdrawn at the end of March 2003.  By agreeing to comply with the cease and desist agreement, the Plaintiff accommodated the Defendant by abandoning its claims of demanding compensation and further information that had been determined by Munich Regional Court first instance court. 

So the decisive question of the legality of search engines in general will probably be answered by higher German courts in parallel cases against the search engines Paperboy.de or Net-Clipping.de.

2. Meteodata

Meteodata, the company that sent letters to hundreds of webmasters demanding they pay for their links to Meteodata's website, filed a petition for bankruptcy. This comes as a reaction to a verdict from the OGH (see last months update) that held that framing the website with the weather charts produced by Meteodata, is not illegal. Some webmasters, who had already paid for links, demanded their money back, while other webmasters, who thus far have not complied with the demand, were strenghtened in their view that the company has no legal basis for its claim.

New in Linking Cases:

New in Technical Background

Das "link" - Element in X(HTML), Subotnik.net

New in Legal Resources:  

Linksandlaw.de has a new section: Framing

This section is written in German and explores the legality of framing. The first part features comments on several court decisions. 

New in Decisions:  

Decisions from Germany

Competition Law

Wer unter der Rubrik "Links" seines Internetauftritts einen Link zu einem Verband aufnimmt, dessen Mitglied er nicht ist, verstößt gegen § 3 UWG, weil bei den angesprochenen Fachkreisen der irreführende Eindruck erweckt wird, Mitglied dieses Verbandes zu sein. Allein die Tatsache, dass Verknüpfungen zu anderen Verbänden oder Unternehmen vorgenommen werden, erweckt bei Verbrauchern generell den Eindruck, dass der Hersteller der Internetseite zu den "verlinkten" Verbänden oder Unternehmen irgendeine geschäftliche Beziehung hat.

Decisions from Spain

Liability

Decisions from Canada:

Trademark Law

Trademark Law

 

Newsarchive

The Links & Law website is updated regularily, so  check back for updated information and resources about search engine and linking issues.

You are currently in the archive with older news. A complete list of the updates can be found here!
 

Latest News - Update 71

Legal trouble for YouTube in Germany

Germany: Employer may google job applicant

EU: Consultation on the E-Commerce-Directive

WIPO Paper on tradmarks and the internet

The ECJ and the AdWords Cases

 

 

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