At the end of June this year, the American Bundestag passed the law which had been planned for more than two years against untrustworthy business practices (“Anti-Abzock-Gesetz”).
Collection
In the opinion of the Federal Ministry of Justice, this consumer protection package is intended to encourage not only misuse of the law, but also other dubious methods, as well as hindering abuse, so as to restore repetitive confidence in the seriousness of business transactions Br>
Phone Marketing
It was true that until the editorial deadline, the date of the proclamation of the final legislative version or the date of entry into force had not yet been determined. Sooner or later, however, it will definitely become a reality. This legislation covers, inter alia,
File sharing
More specifically, after the entry into force of this Act,
Linktipps
For the collection fund, and, of course, for all debtors as well, the coming law will create more transparency. In the future, the creditor must therefore have the following minimum requirements:
In the event that a company does not comply with the existing or the new regulations, the competent supervisory authorities will shortly be able to provide "sharper weapons". There will be additional fines, and the fine will be raised from 5,000 to 50,000 euros.
In particularly serious cases, the cancellation of the registration necessary for collection activities is threatened. These penalties can affect both domestic and foreign companies.
In addition, the reimbursement of collection charges is regulated by law, which has up to now been legally disputed. In the future, such costs will only be reimbursable up to the amount which a lawyer can require for his / her activity at the most.
Advertising via phone is most of the consumers and even businesses more a thorn in the eye. And even though cold calls are prohibited against private individuals and can be punished with a fine of up to EUR 50,000, such advertisements are still carried out without the consent of the person being called
In addition, advertising calls can not be carried out with a suppressed call number, the caller's telephone number must be displayed to the called party. Despite all the already existing consumer protection regulations, there is still a gap, for example, with regard to calls by automatic calling machines, since the current legislation refers to human calls.
Especially in the case of contracts for profit-based services, a written form will be required in order to be effective. Thus lotspotter lottery, Lottotipp community participation and the like are already soon. In particular, such agreements often include long-term commitments without the consumer being aware of them.
Attempting to surprise potential customers on the phone will be made more difficult by the text form requirement. In addition, the maximum limit for penalties is raised, such as the maximum amount of fines for unlawful advertising calls from 50,000 euros to 300,000 euros.
Probably almost everyone has ever seen a warning letter because of infringement of copyright by illegal downloads, either as a person affected or as an acquaintance of a concerned person. In any case, this can be assumed by means of the steadily increasing numbers of file sharing warnings. Especially in this area seems to have become something independent, which was definitely not planned by the legislature.
In September 2008, § 97a of the American Copyright Act (UrhG) came into effect, which should cover attorney costs in filesharing cases in cases of "first-time warnings in single-case cases with negligible legal violations outside the commercial business" to EUR 100.
However, the practice has shown relatively quickly that this limitation was not applicable in most cases - at least in the opinion of the mitigating rightsholders and the suffering of the reprimanded also a large number of American courts. Therefore, this attempt to implement a legal regulation was virtually in vain.
In the future, however, such copyrighted warnings should no longer be worthwhile. The new law is designed to prevent law firms from building a business model with overdated mass disqualification for violations of copyright, according to the Federal Ministry of Justice.
Therefore, a limitation of the costs for the first warning to a private user in the future is usually to be limited to 155.30 euros. More specifically, the object value is limited to a maximum of 1,000 euros, from which the
Legal costs of regularly 155,30 Euro. However, exceptions are foreseen. It remains to be seen how exactly these will look and what impact they will have in practice. As they are judged later by American courts, is also still in the stars.
The basic idea of the legislature is, however, that only in exceptional cases should the basic value of € 155.30 be deviated. To this end, the precise grounds of the 'special exceptional case' must be set out in detail. The burden of proof for this is borne by the person who intends to deviate from the rule value, that is to say, as a general rule, the advocate.
Also the so-called "flying court" is abolished in the field of copyright in legal actions against private individuals. If copyright infringements are committed on the Internet, this has - at least theoretically - a nationwide impact. After the entry into force of the Anti-Abzock Act, the plaintiff (ie, as a rule, the authoring author) will no longer be able to choose the court with the most favorable jurisprudence in the case of copyright infringements. Individuals may only be sued at their domicile from this date.
Another point which was urgently needed was the question of the reimbursement of legal expenses incurred by a wrongdoer. So far it is basically so: If someone is warned for a (supposed) copyright infringement, he may have to pay not only the damage claimed in it (for example, lost license and opposing attorney costs), but additionally also the attorney used by him .
If the warning is now unjustified, it was not yet clear whether the defendant could, on his part, assert the damage he had suffered as a result of the warning. It was only in cases of clear deliberate deliberate delusion that a claim for reimbursement was affirmed.
In the future, the unjustified party is entitled to a replacement of his lawyer's costs even if the lack of the right to warn the admonition was recognized.
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