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Attention: New press release as of 13.8.2002 can be found here: http://www.newsclub.de/prozess/pressrelease2.html
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION German courts about to outlaw searching enginesEU database directive over-interpreted - Searching engines in danger - Join the Discussion!Hof/Germany, 12 July 2002. German judges are apparently about to disapprove of the legality of searching engines. Recently, many articles are published in Germany about the legal question whether it is lawful to set links to web sites, especially concerning news searching engines. The news searching engine NewsClub.de (www.newsclub.de) was sued by a big publishing company for copyright infringement because of web site linking. NewsClub offers the web community a searching engine for news. Currently, it covers more than 100 different news sources. The user can search by news category and headline, being relegated by a web site link to the publisher's web page containing the desired article. The user receives the page directly from the publisher's server, including all contents, advertising, etc. There is no in-frame linking, and each news headline includes the publisher's name. In addition, the news web site gains accesses by the inflow of users that come from NewsClub. Nevertheless, NewsClub was accused of copyright infringement by "Deep Linking" as per the German interpretation of the EU database directive, especially section §87b of the German copyright. In January 2001, NewsClub has won an interim injunction at Berlin court. In the main lawsuit at Munich regional court (LG München), the publishing corporation won. Now, NewsClub is in the appellate proceeding, awaiting the finding of Munich higher regional court (OLG München), the last court before Germany's Federal Supreme Court (BGH). The judges intimated in an intermediate judgement that they think Berlin court was in error - Berlin would not understand the facts - and Munich Higher Court would decide in favor of Munich regional court. NewsClub ist not an unique case - in 1999 already, baumarkt.de searching engine has won at Düsseldorf higher court. Paperboy.de news search has won at Cologne higher court, and is now even at Supreme Court. It could happen now that the Federal Supreme Court could sentence searching engines of illegal linking to other web sites. As Germany is a member of the EU, this could heavily influence other EU member states' jurisprudence. For this reason, NewsClub has created a special discussion forum at http://www.newsclub.de/forum where everyone is invited to talk about this topic. There is also a special board in English. You can find more detailed information about the subject at http://www.newsclub.de/prozess, including documents, sentences, pleadings and links for further information.
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