RTL studios in Cologne, Germany
The Munich Higher Regional Court has made a landmark judgement on retransmission rights for free-TV channels.
The decision confirms the contractual practice of RTL, VOX, ntv, Super RTL and RTLzwei in this regard, as RTL Deutschland announced in Cologne. The broadcasters have always licensed their DVB-C cable retransmission rights and their IPTV and OTT redistribution rights independently of each other.
The judgement ends a long-standing legal dispute between the channels and a large regional telecommunications provider. According to industry sources, the company is NetCologne. In its decision, the court clarifies in particular that the retransmission of TV channels in a closed IPTV network is a legally separate matter from cable retransmission in the DVB-C standard, which can therefore be handled in a separate contract and under different conditions.
The plaintiff telecommunications provider was of the opinion that retransmission in closed IPTV networks was a form of cable retransmission and that broadcasters were therefore obliged to licence IPTV retransmission rights under the conditions of cable distribution. The senate did not follow this view. In particular, according to RTL Deutschland, the senate denied that the broadcasters were obliged to conclude a contract for IPTV retransmission.
Furthermore, the Higher Regional Court confirmed in its judgement that the conditions under which RTL Deutschland’s channels license their cable retransmission rights are not objectionable from any point of view. In addition to the restriction of the licence to cable retransmission in the DVB-C standard with the exclusion of IPTV and OTT retransmission, this also applies to the commercial conditions applied by the broadcasters, the obligation of the cable operator to distribute all licensed RTL channels – provided that at least one of the RTL channels is distributed – and the obligation of the cable operator to retransmit the channel-accompanying signals, in particular the HbbTV signalling, in unchanged form. An appeal against the decision was not allowed.
[UPDATE, February 22] NetCologne declined to provide a statement. “We do not comment on ongoing legal proceedings,” a NetCologne spokesperson told Broadband TV News. “We hope for your understanding that we cannot provide any further information on this topic.”
