German American Law Journal :: American Edition

25. Mai 2010 —CK - Washington.   In Berlin and Hamburg, maintaining a copy of a copyrighted work on your server or internet space, such as a map, for personal use will render you liable for a copyright violation. That is true regardless of the existence of a link on a website to the copied file. As long as a user…

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6. Mai 2010 —CK - Washington.   The replacement of one justice at the Supreme Court in the United States is a major affair with often huge long-term implications. By contrast, the appointment of Supreme Court justices in Germany hardly makes the news. Today, the electoral committee for justices to the several Ge…

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5. April 2010 —CK - Washington. Unless Facebook changes its privacy rules, the German Secretary of Consumer Protection sees herself forced to leave Facebook, Ilse Aigner writes in her open letter dated April 5, 2010. April Fools?No, she is serious, despite a law on the books that requires almost anyone publishing …

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28. Dezember 2009 —CK - Washington.   Major changes in estate and probate law become effective on January 1, 2010. German inheritance law forms a book in the five-book civil code, Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch. The Berlin attorney general summarized the key changes in a press release of December 28, 2009. While the statutor…

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17. November 2009 —CK - Washington.   Germany is approaching the statutory creation of a new intellectual property right, known in German as Leistungsschutzrecht. The term combines several German words, encompasses elements of legal protection for accomplishments, services and products and is intended primarily to aff…

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26. Oktober 2009 —CK - Washington.   Dieter Dettke is one of the preeminent scholars on German foreign policy, having served in insightful positions in Germany and the United States. His new book Germany Says "No" published by Johns Hopkins University Press is now available with a special discount, code NAF. German m…

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10. September 2009 —CK - Washington.   The Berlin Attorney General has published the German government's amicus curiae brief in the Google books settlement matter filed with the United District Court for the Southern District of New York at JurPC.…

9. August 2009 —CK - Washington   It is election season in Germany. The new call in Berlin for blocking Internet sites with downloadable movie content may be nothing but a political maneuver. What is worrisome, however, is the fact that it comes from a party speaker shortly after the federal government vowed that i…

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5. August 2009 —CK - Washington.   German statutes govern attorney compensation and procedural rules provide for the recovery of legal fees and costs by the winner in litigation. A new rule clarifies the recovery and allocation of certain pre-litigation fees, which the federal justice department in Berlin explains…

15. April 2009 —CK - Washington.   Last year, foreigners using their degrees awarded abroad as titles in Germany without appropriate conversion became a target of zealous prosecutors. This year it's Germans with foreign degrees. Last year, the buzz was greater than the cause which was quickly settled. The action ag…

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9. April 2009 —CK - Washington.   The Berlin antitrust agency, Bundeskartellamt, published a press release, in English, explaining the imposition on Microsoft Deutschland GmbH of a €9 million fine on April 8, 2009. Microsoft accepted the penalty which sanctions a price fixing indicent in 2008 for a German version …

26. Januar 2009 —CK - Washington.   Today, the Financial Times reports on the use of special governmental funds to support lay-offs. The system assists corporations in France and Germany, among others, with the retention of skilled personnel. In the German American Law Journal, Jessica Ohle, a Berlin attorney and fo…

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21. Oktober 2008 —CK - Washington.   Beginning January 1, 2009, criminal records from the federal register will become available through electronic transmission. The federal attorney general issued a press release on October 15, 2008, explaining that the federal cabinet in Berlin passed the required regulation which …

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8. Oktober 2008 —CK - Washington.   Instead of doing away with the ill-conceived identification requirement for active users of the Internet, the Berlin Department of Justice provides a guide on compliance with the underlying statute, TMG, and the suggested style of publishing identificying information on web sites.…

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26. September 2008 —CK - Washington.   A practitioner's overview of the new corporate forms that both houses in Berlin approved and may become law by November 1, 2008, is available at the Tysk Ret web site. Although written for a Scandinavian audience, the German-language presentation of the MoMiGM amendments, as they …

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2. Juni 2008 —CK - Washington.   A catalog of 30 unfair acts in retail competition will form the cornerstone of an amendment to the statute against unfair competition in Germany, Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb or UWG. The Berlin Attorney General provided examples of unfair acts in a press release of May 2…

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12. April 2008 —CK - Washington.   On April 11, 2008, the federal diet in Berlin passed a statute for a comprehensive reform of IP laws in Germany. The website of the Berlin attorney general presents a detailed overview and links to the new statute and related material. The new IP rules affect patents, design paten…

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13. Februar 2008 —CK - Washington.   Law student blog Jurakopf links to a PDF file describing the principles of the appointment of justices to the German constitutional court, Bundesverfassungsgericht, in Karlsruhe. The research service of the federal diet in Berlin, a counterpart to the Congressional Research Servic…

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8. Januar 2008 —CK - Washington.   The laws of the jurisdiction where a corporation is formed control the company's operations under a bill submitted to the Berlin diet on January 7, 2008, Brigitte Zypries, the federal attorney general, reported in a press release. The proposed statute covers also associations and…

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10. November 2007 —CK - Washington.   Against substantial opposition, the federal diet in Berlin passed two statutes to ratify European Union directives regulating wire-tapping and collection of data about communications. In the past, telecommunications companies had been authorized to collect and retain connection da…

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12. September 2007 —GC - Washington.   September 10, 2007 marked the beginning of a discussion of the proposed Satellite Data Safety Statute, SatDGSiG, in the federal diet in Berlin. The bill comes as a result of military and security officials concerned about terrorist groups and others with malicious intentions obtai…

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18. August 2007 —CC - Washington. The recent amendments to the German copyright statute which were passed by the diet in Berlin in July 2007, Second Statute to Regulate Copyrights in the Information Society, affect what is known in American law as fair use. The German copyright act, Urhebergesetz, BGBl. 1965 I, 1273…

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9. Juli 2007 —CK - Washington.   Many German courts do not publish decisions as quickly as courts do here. Surprisingly, many law bloggers in Germany pull their news and content from TV, magazines and dailies, but not from the often more detailed press releases that courts publish fairly promptly. There are notab…

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8. Juli 2007 —CK - Washington.   The diet in Berlin passed a set of amendments to the copyright statute which will now go to the states' chamber, Bundesrat. The so-called second basket, Zweiter Korb, is intended to clarify various provisions, such as fair use and corresponding compensation for copyright owners th…

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26. Mai 2007 —CK - Washington.   In its 100th session, the Berlin diet, Bundestag, passed revisions to the federal criminal code, Strafgesetzbuch, late on May 24, 2007. The amendment includes rules defining additional computer crimes, mostly those commonly referred to as hacking. In implementing European Union di…

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