VZBV's suit against VALVe regarding the resale of used PC versions of video games in Germany.

[ballowers100]

VZBV's suit against VALVe regarding the resale of used PC versions of video games in Germany.

Long topic title :/ couldn't figure out what to name it.

Today is the make-or-break day regarding the VZBV's suit against Valve regarding the resale of used games in Germany. The hearing is taking place today, and even if we don't hear anything about it in the news straight away, I expect some developments will be revealed in the coming days.

Here's their twitter account.

https://twitter.com/surferrechte

If anyone here knows how to speak really good German and really good English please translate the German words to English please so people like me who don't understand German can understand what it's about in the coming days as more information comes out. Thank you.

 

[Aaden]

What exactly should I translate? They're twittering tons of stuff about all kinds of rights and legal disputes concerning the digital world.

All that I could find skimming through the first couple of tweets, was this tweet from yesterday:

"Heute mündliche Verhandlung vor dem LG Berlin: #Valve gegen @vzbv #erschöpfungssgrundsatz #urheberrecht"

"Oral court hearing at the LG* Berlin today: #Valve vs @vzbv #exhaustion doctrine #copyright"

*LG is "Landesgericht", sort of a middle level of jurisdiction in the German legal system. If you think the outcome of a legal dispute is not justified, you can appeal against the ruling and it will be taken to the next higher level.

 

[dragonbird]

There's virtually nothing in that twitter feed, or anywhere else, about the court case at the moment. Are you sure you have the date right?

And the 21st January was yesterday. I think it would have hit the tech/gaming media by now if anything had happened.


Edit: OK, so according to that twitter feed, the hearing was yesterday. As there was only one tweet about it, I guess that there was no announcement immediately after the hearing, or that the hearing is still going on. So it doesn't look like there's any by-the-minute twitter feed expected.

(Topic title edited as there doesn't seem to be any "breaking news")

 

[Aaden]

There's this article: http://spielerecht.de/vzbv-gegen-valve-steam-erneute-niederlage-der-verbraucherzentrale-zeichnet-sich-ab/

vzbv vs Valve (Steam): Another defeat of the Verbraucherzentrale (Organisation for protecting consumers' rights) begins to show

As @Telemedicus just reported, the LG Berlin intends to dismiss the vzbv's case against the operator of the gaming platform Steam. This seems to become apparent from the court's statements in today's oral court hearing. The Verbraucherschützer (members of the Verbraucherzentrale) once more had sued Valve due to non-transferable user accounts.

Background

Already in 2010, the BGH (Bundesgerichtshof, Germany's highest civil court) had ruled that connecting video games with non-transferable accounts is legit - even if that means that re-selling the game-CD is pointless. This was disputed because the copyright exhaustion doctrine actually allows re-selling a copyright-protected work without the copyright owners consent, once it has been put into circulation. BGH - appropriately - ruled the exhaustion doctrine to be a limit for the copyright owners negative rights, but not a "reselling right" for the customer. Due to that an AGB (Terms of Service) clause prohibitting the transfer of user accounts is not legally void either.

After that, the EuGH (European Court) made a ruling concerning used software and the range of application for the exhaustion doctrine, that has been given much attention: The exhaustion doctrine that originally - in the word by word sense of relevant guidelines, as well - was only applicable to physical goods should be applied to digitally distributed software as well. For explaining this decision the EuGH considers the practical usefulness of the exhaustion doctrine.

The Current Court Case

Due to this decision the Verbraucherzentrale saw another chance for a strike against the concept of non-transferable user accounts. Since the EuGH takes the practical usefulness of the exhaustion doctrine into consideration, it might also change the perspective on AGB clauses about non-transferability of user accounts because these made reselling the copies in question uneconomic.

However the LG Berlin seems to hold the view that the EuGH ruling does not change the situation of AGB law in Germany. Indeed, this court ruling does not directly affect the issues that were critical in the BGH's first Valve ruling.

Anyways, we're looking forward to the ruling and its reasons and will keep you up-to-date.

 

[Sana_mia]

The whole thing is mostly irrelevant whatever they decide to do.

This comes from the simple fact, that we have to wait how the EuGH decides when they take on the specific subject of video games. The problem lies here in the classification:

-If games are software then they must be re-salable under European law. No matter what means distribution was used.
As an example windows is software and as such can be bought and sold on the second hand market, this includes all support that would have been provided to the first buyer. (patches, bug-fixes, etc.)

But by some definitions in law, video-games could be viewed as movies, or a mix of video and music or even art, which can change how they should be dealt with.