Raw deal for film producer as OLG fleshes out its reasoning
IPKat - IP news and fun for everyone: From the industrious and observant Birgit Clark comes news of an interesting decision from Germany in the field of personality/privacy rights v freedom of art. The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt published a press release on 9 July 2008 which tells us as follows: “In a decision of 17 June 2008 (case reference Az.: 14 U 146/07) the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main (OLG Frankfurt am Main) confirms a ban upon the real life movie “Rohtenburg” by granting precedence of the constitutional protection of the personality over freedom of art.
The misspelling of Rothenburg as “Rohtenburg” was intentional and appeared to be a “pun” on the adjective “roh” = “raw”, as in raw meat, in German.
The Frankfurt court confirmed its earlier preliminary decision of 2006 (as well as the lower court’s decision) in which it ruled that the movie “Rohtenburg” was based on the real life story of the claimant, who had become known as the “Cannibal of Rothenburg” (German: “Kannibale von Rothenburg”)
The movie “Rohtenburg”, which was produced by the defendant, may not be distributed in Germany or shown in German cinemas. In their decision the judges refer to the claimant’s personality rights. The claimant was found guilty of murdering a 43 old man, after unmanning him and eating parts of his body. The case was widely publicised worldwide: see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes.
The court decided that, even though the claimaint received a murder conviction for his actions, which the movie depicted, the claimant should not have to endure being made the object of a horror movie with a storyline that allowed the general public to clearly identify the claimant as the main “monster” protagonist.
After balancing the conflicting rights, the court gave precedence to the protection of the claimant’s human personality under Articles 2(1),…