Month: May 2013

Update: Do Americans Make Better Global Lawyers?

15 May 2013
by Peter Bert
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In October 2012, I asked the question and pointed to a lecture by professor Mathias W. Reimann, who promised to have the answers: “Why Americans Make Better Global Lawyers”. The lecture was to be delivered at the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg as the 13th Ernst Rabel Lecture. I promised that I would follow up on the topic, but I must ask my readers to wait until January 2014, when the manuscript is scheduled for publication in The Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law (RabelsZ). In the meantime, Gian-Reto Schulthess picked up the question, and reached the conclusion that Americans may make better gobal lawyers, but Europeans make better international lawyers.

P.S.: Professor Reimann states, on his website: “Please note: Prof. Reimann does not use email.” There are days on which I envy him.

 

Update: Federal Supreme Court on Google’s Autocomplete Search Terms

15 May 2013
by Peter Bert
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Legal Tribune Online’s  daily press survey summarizes the reactions to yesterday’s Google judgment and provides links where the articles are not pay-walled. The reaction is mixed: Süddeutsche say that the court brings the idea of responsibility to bear on the internet (“Die Richter etablieren das Prinzip Verantwortung im Internet.”) and finds that the court does not place undue burdens on Google.  taz is critical of the fact that the control about what is found on the net is now handed to those who feel insulted (“Netz der Beleidigten”) and objective standards may be undermined.

Frankfurter Allgemeine champions plurality of opinion within the paper: Reinhard Müller in politics is happy to see that Google did not get away with the excuse that it was only the machine who did it, whereas legal correspondent Corrina Budras (“Überzogenes Feingefühl der Richter”) believes that the judges were too pussy-footy and Zeitgeist-ridden. The average internet user fully understands that search terms are the path to a result, but not the result itself, she says, and the court did over-react.

Federal Supreme Court: Google Liable for Defamatory Autocomplete Search Terms

14 May 2013
by Peter Bert
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This morning, the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) has held Google liable for a functionality of its search engine, the autocomplete function. The claimants had requested that Google ceased the publication of autocomplete results that suggested “fraud” or “Scientology” as additional search terms when the claimants’ names were searched. Google will now have to stop the publication of such “predictions” if and when it has become aware that automatically created predictions infringe the rights of third parties.

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