Global law firm Reed Smith has been instructed by Yahoo! and has filed a constitutional complaint on its behalf with the German Federal Constitutional Court. The complaint to the highest German court challenges the highly controversial neighbouring right for press publishers. Reed Smith is working with constitutional law professor Alexander Blankenagel from the Humboldt University in Berlin on the matter.

This new right was introduced into the German Copyright Act last year just before the parliamentary elections, despite the fact that it was hotly debated. The law, which came into force in August 2013, gives publishers the neighbouring right to claim royalties against search engine providers for search results which show parts of article content. Single words or smallest text snippets displayed in search results are excluded from the rule. However, the definition of how many words are “single words” or the meaning of “smallest text snippets” is missing.

Helge Huffman, general counsel of Yahoo! Germany, commented:

“Yahoo! argues that the new neighbouring right imposes an unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of information of Internet users because obtaining specific information from the Internet without the help of search engines is not feasible.”1

The Reed Smith team is led by partner Alexander Klett. Professor Alexander Blankenagel of Humboldt University Berlin and Helge Huffmann, general counsel of Yahoo Germany, are also advising.