The German law introducing a neighbouring right related to copyright for newspaper publishers has been definitively invalidated by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In a judgment delivered on Thursday 12 September (case No. C-299/17), the judges in Luxembourg considered that this law was obsolete, since the European Commission had not been notified of the German law.
As a result, the American giant Google escapes penalties for having published, from 2013, news snippets without prior authorisation on its search engine and on its automated information site Google News.
The complaint was lodged by the German collective licensing body, VG Media. The organisation boasted that it could benefit from a new German law dating from 2013 introducing a neighbouring right for press publishers to publish news snippets, "with the exception of isolated words or very short extracts from texts".
However, in its judgment, the Court decided to invalidate the German law. It considers that this is a "technical rule" within the meaning of Directive 98/34 on technical standards and regulations, since it applies to information society services. As a result, the judges consider that the European Commission should have been notified of it, which was not the case. The text is therefore deemed inapplicable.
However, it should be recalled that in March 2019, the co-legislators adopted a new copyright directive introducing such a provision at EU level (see EUROPE 12222/6). Directive 2019/790 will be applicable from 2021. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)