Waldorf Frommer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Waldorf Frommer
legal form GbR
Seat Munich
Number of employees around 60 lawyers
Branch Legal advice
Website www.waldorf-frommer.de

Waldorf Frommer (formerly: Waldorf & Kollegen , Waldorf Rechtsanwälte ) is a college of around 60 lawyers based in Munich , which specialize in questions of copyright . The law firm represents various large book publishers, film production companies and companies in the sound recording industry and became known in particular because of mass warnings .

activities

The firm represents the clients Constantin Film , Corbis , Getty Images , Der Hörverlag , Verlagsgruppe Random House , Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music , Bastei Lübbe , Weltbild Verlag , Tele München Fernseh GmbH + Co Produktionsgesellschaft , Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch , Rowohlt Verlag , Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck , Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur , Argon Verlag , Carlsen Verlag , Universum Film , Twentieth Century Fox of Germany and Warner Bros. Entertainment for copyright violations. The law firm's activities are primarily directed against users of Internet file sharing platforms and sellers at auctions on the eBay trading platform, as well as against the operators of private homepages , against whom warnings are issued. The dispatch of identically worded warning letters in a large number of cases is typical for the law firm Waldorf Frommer .

For example, in December 2003 the law firm Waldorf Frommer requested the operators of around 100 websites to submit a declaration of cease and desist with criminal penalties . The amount in dispute was set at EUR 250,000 each, which, in conjunction with the Lawyers ' Fees Act , led to cost calculations of around EUR 4,600. The website operators were accused of distributing software that "[is] solely intended to enable programs to copy protected audio CDs that would not be able to do so on their own."

From February 2004 the law firm Waldorf Frommer issued warnings against people who wanted to auction off old magazine CDs from computer magazines such as Computer Bild on eBay . The reason given was that the CDs were illegal because they contained software to bypass copy protection ; For example, the products CD Master Clone 4 from bhv Software , CD Mate , CloneCD from SlySoft and Clony XXL were affected . The required legal fees were up to 3000 euros.

From August 2004, the law firm Waldorf Frommer issued warnings against website operators with similar allegations: Devices for circumventing copy protection measures had been distributed, which caused annual damage to the firm's clients in the “three-digit million range”. Affected by these warnings were well-known hardware websites such as Dark-Tweaker.com, ComputerBase.de, Geekster.de, MHz-Tuning.de and Coujo.de, some of which had to completely stop their service as a result of the warning.

From 2006, the law firm Waldorf Frommer issued warnings against filesharers in the eDonkey and eMule exchanges , which deal with the illegal provision of audio books from the Lübbe publishing group , Random House Audio and DHV - Der Hörverlag . The subject of these warnings were mostly three to five audio books, and the amount in dispute was set between 10 and 30,000 euros per title, so that the lawyer's fees per warning were between 666 and 999 euros.

Since April 27, 2009, the law firm Waldorf Frommer has been sending warnings on behalf of Constantin Film AG to participants in the eMule and BitTorrent exchanges for violating copyrights . The subject of these warnings are the films 13 , The Baader Meinhof Complex , Milk , Disaster Movie , Horst Schlämmer - Isch is a candidate! , Wickie and the strong men , Maria, he doesn't like it! , Turkish for beginners , Igor , a man's thing , Shutter Island , Werner - ice cold! , Zweiohrküken , Step Up 3D and, since autumn 2011, the audio book Wetlands by Charlotte Roche . Since August 2012 on behalf of Tele München Fernseh GmbH + Co production company Safe - Death Safe , Looper . The attorney's fees amount to 578 euros, the demanded damages amount to 450 euros, a total of 1,028 euros.

Since September 2012, Waldorf Frommer has represented a new rights holder, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Germany GmbH, based in Frankfurt am Main , which belongs to the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation group. The subject of the warnings , which are issued on behalf of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Germany GmbH, are now not only films such as Life of Pi: Shipwreck with Tiger , but also series such as The Simpsons , How I Met Your Mother , Homeland , Modern Family or New Girl .

In December 2013 / January 2014 Waldorf Frommer sent thousands of warnings about films such as Hangover 3 or Fack ju Göhte .

In early March 2016, the computer magazine c't reported in an article on the prosecution of copyright violations by refugees. In particular, the owners of the relevant Internet connections through which legal violations have been committed are requested by the law firm to refrain from punishment. The law firm took a position on this in a press release. According to this, contrary to some reports, it is not a targeted action against refugees, since, according to the law firm, the injured rights holder cannot regularly know what background or origin a subscriber has. The claim should first be addressed to the person to whom the internet connection is registered, because their personal responsibility is presumed according to the highest court rulings. In justified and documented cases, the law firm and its clients would show consideration and proceed with a sense of proportion.

In addition to lawyers, the firm also employs software developers who develop programs for the firm's day-to-day business.

Legal proceedings

In November 2007, a decision against the Heinz Heise publishing house was confirmed and Heise was legally prohibited from setting links to the homepage of the software company SlySoft Inc. The decision of the Munich Higher Regional Court was overturned by the Federal Court of Justice in October 2010 and ruled in favor of Heise Verlag.

In December 2015, the law firm represented a media company in the ECJ case “Mc Fadden”, which essentially dealt with the liability of WiFi operators for legal violations. First of all, the liability for interference was confirmed by a judgment of the ECJ in September 2016, before it was abolished in Germany in 2018, also confirmed by a court. The case has been the subject of widespread media coverage and much controversy.

In May 2016, the Federal Court of Justice ruled in two file-sharing proceedings led by the law firm in favor of the media industry and ruled that the subject values ​​used in these proceedings were appropriate. In October 2016, the Federal Constitutional Court did not accept the complaint of a subscriber against a ruling by the Regional Court Munich I in a file-sharing procedure led by Waldorf Frommer and confirmed the case law of the Regional Court Munich based on the requirements of the Federal Court of Justice. The law firm publishes judgments from the legal proceedings it has conducted on its own website.

At the beginning of 2018, the company represented the S. Fischer publishing house in a legal dispute with Project Gutenberg . The project provides 18 novels by the authors Heinrich Mann , Thomas Mann and Alfred Döblin , which are already in the public domain in the USA , but still enjoy copyright protection under German law. The judgment of the regional court Frankfurt / M. Prohibited Project Gutenberg from making the 18 titles in question accessible to German users in electronic form. In response to this, the project blocked access to all 56,000 works offered on the site, most of them also in the public domain in Germany, for all users with German IP addresses.

The magazine lesen.net the firm referred to in this context as a "notorious Abmahn law firm."

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Own website. Retrieved December 23, 2016 .
  2. ↑ Employee of the law firm Waldorf Frommer , as of December 2016
  3. ↑ Musikindustrie-Verband warns providers of copy software , Heise online, December 4, 2003
  4. ↑ Wave of warnings from the music industry continues , Heise online, February 23, 2004
  5. ↑ Musikindustrie-Verband warns providers of copy software , Heise online, December 4, 2003
  6. ↑ Wave of warnings from the music industry continues , heise online, February 23, 2004
  7. ↑ http://www.waldorf-frommer.de/mandanten.html
  8. ↑ heise.de: Mass warnings target refugees
  9. ↑ Correction: No “wave of warnings” against refugees!
  10. ↑ The law firm Waldorf Frommer defends itself - and rightly so!
  11. ↑ WALDORF FROMMER: Software developer (m / f) .NET (C #, WPF) . In: jobs.golem.de . November 9, 2015. Archived from the original on November 10, 2015. Retrieved on November 10, 2015.
  12. ↑ Link ban against Heise confirmed! , Heise online, November 27, 2007
  13. ^ LG Munich I, Az. 21 O 6742/07, judgment of November 14, 2007 - PDF copy on jurpc.de
  14. ↑ BGH Heise vs. Music industry: Federal Court of Justice rejects link ban , Heise online, October 15, 2010
  15. ↑ ECJ, September 15, 2016 - C-484/14 , full-text publications at dejure.org
  16. ↑ heise online: Störerhaftung: BGH ends legal dispute of WLAN activist McFadden. Accessed January 30, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Simon Rebiger: Court confirms the abolition of WLAN interference liability. In: netzpolitik.org. March 15, 2018, accessed January 30, 2020 (German).
  18. ↑ ECJ on the liability of the W-LAN provider (McFadden case) , Internet Law Blog September 15, 2016
  19. ↑ Freifunk Adé , Legal Tribune Online, September 15, 2016 2016
  20. ↑ ECJ confirms liability for non-secure, anonymous WLAN networks , Waldorf Frommer News, September 15, 2016
  21. ↑ BGH, May 12, 2016 - I ZR 1/15 , full text publications at dejure.org
  22. ↑ Current case law of the BGH on file sharing , Internet Law Blog October 25, 2016
  23. ↑ 2 BvR 2193/15 , decision of the Federal Constitutional Court, September 30, 2016
  24. ↑ Press release of the law firm WALDORF FROMMER: Federal Constitutional Court confirms “If and if” case law of the District Court of Munich I - high demands on the factual presentation of the subscriber , October 26, 2016
  25. ↑ case law
  26. ^ LG Frankfurt am Main, judgment of February 9, 2018 - Az .: 2-03 O 494/14 (accessed on March 4, 2018).
  27. ↑ "PGLAF complied with the Court's order on February 28, 2018 by blocking all access to www.gutenberg.org and sub-pages to all of Germany." Court Order to Block Access in Germany Project Gutenberg, accessed on March 2, 2018
  28. ↑ Read.net

Web links