The Regional Court of Hamburg has issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the ARD magazine “Panorama” from broadcasting an exclusive scene (judgment of September 7, 2017 – 308 O 287/17). The reason for this was that the scene had been shown exclusively in a G20 documentary by “Spiegel TV Magazin”.
The scene in dispute shows police officers violently beating local residents during the G20 protests. The film scene was intended to serve as evidence for a “Panorama” report that dealt with police violence during the G20 summit.
Prior consent expressly denied
NDR was well aware of the legal situation and that it was not allowed to show the scene without permission. For this reason, NDR – as the producer of the Panorama program – asked Spiegel TV before broadcasting the scene whether it could use the footage as third-party material. However, this was expressly refused. However, consent was given for the use of another scene.
Nevertheless, Panorama decided to also show the unauthorized 8-second scene in its report “Police violence during G20” with a quote annotation. As already made clear by the non-granting of consent, Spiegel TV did not agree to the broadcast of the scene and took legal action against the broadcast before the Hamburg Regional Court. Spiegel TV obtained a temporary injunction prohibiting the ARD magazine from broadcasting the material.
“Legitimate interest of the author” – Spiegel TV makes the exclusivity of the material clear
In court, Panorama had invoked the right to quote under copyright law. Section 51 of the German Copyright Act (UrhG) allows the use of third-party protected works in one’s own work. However, this only applies if the scope of use is justified by the specific purpose.
According to the presiding judge, a “legitimate interest of the author” in the exclusivity of the image scene was made clear at the hearing. Panorama was unable to sufficiently explain why the scene was essential for Panorama magazine.
ARD’s invocation of the right to quote inadmissible
In an overall assessment, the impairment of the interests of NDR, which is responsible for Panorama within ARD, was less serious than the impairment of Spiegel TV’s interests. This is because the scene was exclusively recorded Spiegel TV material, which the employees and the camera team could only have filmed at great personal risk.
Quotation rights should be used with caution
The ruling by Hamburg District Court shows once again that the right to quote also has clear limits that should not be exceeded. If you want to use someone else’s work, you should first try to obtain the relevant consent. If this is not possible, the strict requirements for a permissible quotation should be checked before use. In this way, a costly warning or even legal proceedings can be avoided.