Copyright: Dispute value cap per subject matter of dispute

On 24.05.2019, the Mannheim Regional Court ruled that the value of the subject-matter for the calculation of the right to reimbursement of costs for the legal fees for a copyright warning to private individuals is capped at EUR 1,000.00, but this value is not per warning, but per subject matter of the dispute. The provisions of Section 97a UrhG in the case of warnings to private individuals were also criticised, since the very low value of the dispute of only EUR 1,000.00 often made it difficult for authors to pursue their own rights. The reason for this is that the very low legal fees due to the low dispute make it hardly worthwhile to deal with cases in an economic way. As a result, the perpetrator has to accept the injuries. As an alternative, only highly specialised law firms with mass warnings were eligible.

Until now, it had not been decided whether the catch value of EUR 1,000.00 per photograph or per warning was valid. This has now been decided in favour of the authors and can make the illegal use of, for example, stock photos on private websites an expensive thing again. You can find an overview of the use of photos in this article and an article on the risk of a warning if the author is not named here.