Ancillary copyright for press publishers

The ancillary copyright for press publishers[1] (German: Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger) is a proposal incorporated in 2012 legislation proposed by the ruling coalition of the German government, led by Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to extend publishers' copyrights.

The Federal Government is therefore currently working on a bill to adapt German copyright law even more to the requirements of a modern information society.

[14][15] On 5 March 2012, the joint coalition committee agreed to introduce "related rights" for press publishers as part of the third basket of the reform of the German Copyright Act.

[16] Within a year, the commercial use of press products on the Internet, particularly for search engine providers and news aggregators, was to be subject to a charge.

[19] On 25 August 2016, Statewatch published a draft of the European Commission's impact assessment on the modernisation of EU copyright rules.

This draft states that the Commission will indeed propose the introduction of an EU wide ancillary copyright for news publishers, contradicting reassurances from Andrus Ansip that no link tax would be introduced.

Google and other large internet companies refused to negotiate with the group, claiming that they did not need to pay and that the license fee demanded, of 11%, was unfair.

VG Media filed a competition complaint against Google, which it accuses of illegally misusing its dominant market position.

[22] In 2019 the European Court of Justice ruled that this German law was invalid, because it had been submitted in advance to the EU Commission, as required.

"[2] Supporters have stated that freedom of speech would be protected because "journalistic citations from news articles" would be exempt from the bill, as would private Internet users.

[3] Publishers perceive the fees as fair compensation for the effort put into reporting; in an example presented at a hearing on the bill, "a bank employee reads his morning newspaper online and sees something about the steel industry, and then advises his clients to invest in certain markets ...

So that means the publisher deserves a fair share of any money made"[2] According to Till Kreuzer, writing in Computer Law & Security Review and cited by a group opposing the bill, Initiative Gegen ein Leistungsschutzrecht, the 2009 German coalition government announced in its coalition contract that "Press Publishers shall not be discriminated against other disseminators of copyright protected works [e.g. film or music producers].

"[2] A spokesman of Google denounced the proposal: "We don't have any sympathy for these plans, as an ancillary copyright lacks all factual, economic, and legal foundation.