Reuses other publishers' content, in Germany

Urheberrechtsgesetz (UrhG), § 19a · Read the law's page

• Making a work available to the public by wire or wirelessly, so that members of the public can reach it from places and at times of their choosing, is part of the author's exclusive right of public communication (sections 15(2) and 19a).
• A communication is public if it is intended for a plurality of members of the public, and anyone with no personal relationship to the person exploiting the work, or to the others to whom the work is made accessible, is a member of the public (section 15(3)).

Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG), §§ 4 Nr. 4, 4a · Read the law's page

• Do not target a competitor for obstruction (section 4, number 4).
• Do not commit an aggressive commercial practice, meaning one that in the concrete case is capable of significantly impairing the freedom of decision of a consumer or other market participant through harassment, coercion or undue influence, and is capable of leading that person to a commercial decision they would not otherwise have taken (section 4a(1)).
• Burdensome or disproportionate non-contractual obstacles to a consumer's or other market participant's exercise of contractual rights, including the right to terminate the contract or to switch to another product, service or trader, count among the circumstances that make a practice aggressive (section 4a(2), number 4).

MStV §§ 91-95, 115 · Read the law's page

• If you provide a media intermediary (a telemedium that also aggregates, selects and presents third parties' journalistic and editorial offerings in a generally accessible way) used in Germany and reaching one million users a month there, designate an authorized recipient in Germany for service of documents in fine proceedings and make him known in your offering in an easily recognizable and directly accessible manner (section 92).
• Keep easily perceptible, directly accessible and permanently available the criteria that decide whether content gains access to your media intermediary and whether it stays, and the central criteria of aggregation, selection and presentation of content and their weighting, including information on how the algorithms you use work, in understandable language (section 93(1)).
• If your media intermediary has a thematic specialization, make it perceptible through the design of your offering, and make changes to the published criteria or to that orientation perceptible without delay in the same way (section 93(2) and (3)).
• If you offer a social network, ensure that telemedia in it are labelled as section 18(3) requires, namely that content or messages created automatically by a computer program show that they are automated where the account used appears from its outward form to be meant for natural persons (section 93(4)).
• Do not discriminate against journalistic and editorial offerings on whose perceptibility you have a particularly high influence: do not systematically depart, without objectively justified reason, from your published criteria in favor of or to the detriment of a specific offering, and do not apply criteria that directly or indirectly unfairly and systematically hinder offerings (section 94(1) and (2)).
• Produce the necessary documents to the competent Landesmedienanstalt on request (section 95).

Urheberrechtsgesetz (UrhG), §§ 87f, 87g, 87h, 87i, 87j, 87k · Read the law's page

• Applies to you if, as a provider of information society services, you make a press publisher's press publication publicly available, in whole or in part, or reproduce it, for online use.
• A press publication is a collection mainly of journalistic writings, published under a single title on a periodic or regularly updated basis to inform the public, under the publisher's own editorial responsibility; scientific or academic periodicals are excluded.
• Obtain the press publisher's permission before, as a provider of information society services, making its press publication publicly available or reproducing it, in whole or in part, for online use.
• You need no permission to use facts contained in a press publication, for private or non-commercial use by individual users, for hyperlinking, or for single words or very short extracts.
• The right lasts two years from a press publication's first appearance and does not apply to publications first published before 6 June 2019.
• The publisher cannot invoke the right against an author or related-right holder whose work is in the publication, or to stop use of works validly licensed to it under a simple licence or already in the public domain.
• The general limitations of German copyright law, including the text-and-data-mining exception and the quotation right, apply correspondingly to the press publisher's right.

Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Modernisierung des Produkthaftungsrechts · Read the law's page

• If you develop or make software, or have it designed or made, you answer as its manufacturer; free and open-source software developed or supplied outside a business activity is outside the definition of a product (§§ 2(1) No. 3 and 3).
• Keep supplying the software updates and upgrades needed to keep the product safe while the product is within your control: if you are able to provide them yourself or through a third party you keep control, and a defect caused by software, by an update or upgrade, or by a missing necessary update is not excused because it arose after you put the product into circulation (§§ 8(2) and 9(2)).
• Meet the product-safety requirements that apply to your product, safety-relevant cybersecurity requirements included: they count in judging whether it is defective (§ 7 No. 5), and failing a binding product-safety requirement that protects against the injury presumes it defective (§ 20(1) No. 2).
• Account for what your product learns or acquires after it is put into circulation: the effect of that ability is weighed in judging whether it is defective (§ 7 No. 3).
• Keep records you could produce if a court orders disclosure on a claimant's plausible claim; failing to disclose despite the order presumes the product defective (§§ 19(1) and 20(1) No. 1).
• If you hold relevant evidence for a product liability claim against someone else, the court can, on the claimant's application, order you as a third party to disclose it, limited to what is necessary and proportionate, except to the extent you may refuse to testify under sections 383 to 385 of the Code of Civil Procedure (§ 19(1) and (3)).
• If you are a manufacturer outside the EU, your importer into the EU market and your representative appointed in writing and established in the EU are liable as the manufacturer is, and where there is neither, the fulfilment service provider is liable too (§§ 10 and 11).
• If you make a product available in the supply chain without being its manufacturer or importer, or run an online platform that lets consumers conclude distance contracts with traders where the conditions of Article 6(3) of the Digital Services Act are met, you are liable as the manufacturer is when no manufacturer, importer, representative or fulfilment service provider established in the EU can be identified, unless within one month of receiving the injured person's request you name one of them or your own supplier of the product (§§ 12 and 13).
• If you substantially modify a product without the manufacturer's consent and then make it available on the market or put it into operation, you are the manufacturer of the modified product (§ 5(1)).
• Do not rely on a contract term to limit or exclude your liability to an injured person; departing from the Act to their disadvantage is not allowed (§ 18).
• You are excused if you did not put the product into circulation, if the defect results from the product meeting legal requirements, or if the defect could not be recognized according to the objective state of science and technology at the relevant time (§ 9(1)).
• Claims lapse three years after the creditor learned, or should have learned, of the defect, the damage and the identity of the debtor, and expire ten years after the product was put into circulation or into operation, or 25 years for a latent personal injury (§§ 16 and 17).

Urheberrechtsgesetz (UrhG), § 51 · Read the law's page

• You may reproduce, distribute and publicly communicate a published work for the purpose of quotation, provided the extent of the use is justified by the specific quotation purpose.
• The statute's illustrative cases are individual works incorporated after publication into an independent scientific work to explain its content, passages cited after publication in an independent work of language, and individual passages of a published musical work cited in an independent musical work.
• The quotation privilege also covers using an illustration or other reproduction of the quoted work, even where that reproduction is itself separately protected by a copyright or related right.