German Supreme court: Adblocking and taxing advertisers for unblocking, legal
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Easiest citation for this would be from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_court#Germany
> When it comes to civil and criminal cases, the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) is at the top of the hierarchy of courts.
The German press release linked in the article even stated that Springer is considering to appeal to the actual Supreme court.
Federal Constitutional Court and Federal Court of Justice? There is no "Supreme Court" in Germany.
But sometimes even using correct English words is not enough. In the USA "Supreme Court" sounds authoritative. And it usually is. Except in New York State.
The names of courts in New York state often confuse outsiders. The "New York Supreme Court" is the equivalent of "trial-level court" in most other states. New York State's highest court is the Court of Appeals.
BTW, Maryland also calls their top-level court the Court of Appeals, but does not use the term Supreme Court within their state court system.
To explain: this means in many cases the Federal Court of Justice is the last court to which can be appealed. Axel Springer has already declared that they will try to appeal, but this will be difficult. To appeal they have to show that their constitutional rights might have been violated.
Another note: Then there is the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In exceptional cases this court can be appealed to, for example if a national court's decision has violated a human right. Germany has ratified the European Human Rights and declared that they accept rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. However it is extremely dubious that a company could ever appeal to this court.
(A side note to give an example what this Court decides: A Swiss case has been ruled: A Filipina mother with children in Switzerland divorced from her Swiss father tried to enter Switzerland. The denial was deemed to violate the human right to have a family and Switzerland was ordered to let the woman enter the country.)
As for exceptional cases, I think the gist is any case that can involve human rights violations is exceptional, as the majority of cases don't even get into the territory of potentially violating the European Convention on Human Rights.
This means, a company can suffer from a violation of protected rights. An example is the right for information (a form of free speech).
Whether the ECHR would ever accept or has already accepted a complaint from a company I don't know. After all companies aren't really humans.
Who knew!
All those have their own federal supreme courts, suffix „-gerichtshof“ (the Bundesgerichtshof handles both civil and criminal matters, but shows this split even internally by numbering civil senates with Arabic numerals and criminal senates with Roman numerals).
The Bundesverfassungsgericht stands beside all those courts and has jurisdiction over constitutional actions. It is specifically not allowed to second-guess the other courts in material questions, but of course, it gets muddy and the relationship between it and the Bundesgerichtshof can get testy sometimes.
While it is not above the other federal supreme courts, its decisions outrank their decisions because the constitution is the highest source of legal rules. It‘s also the only court whose decisions themselves carry the force of law.
Good choice of words. They are all called highest courts (höchste Gerichte). The BVerfG concerns only those cases in which a fundamental right (Grundrecht) is concerned, as outlined in what would be called a constitution (even if some would debate that it shouldn't be called, and isn't actually named, "Verfassung").
> It‘s also the only court whose decisions themselves carry the force of law.
This is not true. The decisions of higher courts can carry the force of law. At the very least, Proceedings before the BVerfG don't suspend the force of a challenged sentence.
Unless you are able to, and the BVerfG willing to admit a breach of fundamental right, the court is rather inconsequential -- if you are even in a position to challenge. I doubt that the judicative making law as if it was the legislative branch, is seen as fundamental breach.
The romantic view of the separation of powers does not reflect reality very well. Single sentences of the lowest courts can be seen as laws on an individual basis. Saying they had to follow the law is shifting the goal post to defining what a proper law is (a problem that should be interesting to programmers).
By the way, there are also Landesverfassungsgerichte for each member state of the federation. But only the BVerfG has power to demand legislature be changed.
in most contexts this is 'free' as in 'freedom' whereas here [perhaps coincidentally] it's 'free' as in 'free beer'
Similar to "libre".
That's a billion dollar market waiting for disruption.
I don’t want to get paid breadcrumbs for my time or attention.
Their other big war is on the public broadcasting system. Making it more popular. This time for the younger audience.
Try it yourself: https://www.foris.com/en/service-center/litigation-costs-cal...
I used a million as the disputed amount, which is within the usual range for such trials.
Users can still decide which code and data ends up on their computer. If they trust Eyeo more than Axel Springer Verlag, that's their decision to make. Axel Springer is free to refuse serving those users.