File sharing and the rights holder’s burden of proof

The District Court of Frankfurt am Main has issued a new, interesting verdict on the subject of file sharing.

In doing so, the Landgericht first refers to the fact that purely flat-rate allegations that someone other than the connection owner might have been the perpetrator of the file-sharing act were not to meet the conditions set, inter alia, by the BGH, for the secondary burden of proof of the connection holder. would suffice.

In the present case, however, the defendant makes concrete statements regarding possible other users, that they would also like to play computer games(and we know, thanks to the BGH, that women also play first-person shooters!) and that somehow their nephew is also involved.

That was sufficient for the Landgericht in the context of the secondary burden of proof. In addition, it claimed that it had complied with the requirements of the “afterlife case law” of the Federal Court of Justice by informing its own family members not to use file sharing. See this article or this article. The ECJ had previously addressed this issue(see here).

The rights holder therefore largely lost the process. However, the defendant will have to bear part of the costs in the future, since her statements about the possible perpetrator varied and the rights holder therefore brought a useless case against the initially designated family members.

However, the applicant may require a declaration that the defendant is 1. is obliged to compensate it for all damage which it is entitled to in relation to the useless legal costs incurred in relation to the defendant. 2. but […] only damages which have arisen after receipt of the defence […] have arisen and will arise.

In this procedure it is once again impressively shown that precise knowledge of file-sharing law (which is now extremely extensive!), truthful statements in the trial, clarification of the family but also experience as a lawyer can certainly lead to that unjustified file-sharing allegations can be repelled. I would be happy to advise you on this!

Author: Marian Härtel

Marian Härtel ist Rechtsanwalt und Fachanwalt für IT-Recht mit einer über 25-jährigen Erfahrung als Unternehmer und Berater in den Bereichen Games, E-Sport, Blockchain, SaaS und Künstliche Intelligenz. Seine Beratungsschwerpunkte umfassen neben dem IT-Recht insbesondere das Urheberrecht, Medienrecht sowie Wettbewerbsrecht. Er betreut schwerpunktmäßig Start-ups, Agenturen und Influencer, die er in strategischen Fragen, komplexen Vertragsangelegenheiten sowie bei Investitionsprojekten begleitet. Dabei zeichnet sich seine Beratung durch einen interdisziplinären Ansatz aus, der juristische Expertise und langjährige unternehmerische Erfahrung miteinander verbindet. Ziel seiner Tätigkeit ist stets, Mandanten praxisorientierte Lösungen anzubieten und rechtlich fundierte Unterstützung bei der Umsetzung innovativer Geschäftsmodelle zu gewährleisten.