The presiding judge Rudolf Landwehrmeyer sits between two large towers stacked files on Monday morning at 11 a.m. The case has long since become a precedent: Decker, author of Til Schweiger's scripts in 2018, had “none -eared bunnies” and “two -ear chicks”, which sued two production companies and requested information about the sales achieved with the films and adequate participation. In the Copyright Act, the “Fairnes paragraph” has given creative people to a reasonable participation in the film success since 2002 if the remuneration in the “conspicuous mismatch” of the income from the film is. The case caused a sensation. The Association of German screenwriters and the Suche Spring of the German Film Academy declared solidarity with Decker. According to many, it was about the rights of authors as a whole.
Right to information
In the first stage, Decker had prevailed in front of the district court. The production companies should disclose how much sales they had done in the cinema, on video, on television and on internet platforms with the two films. Barefoot and Warner had appealed, so the parties saw themselves before the chamber court in February 2022 like this Wednesday. “In our opinion,” said the presiding judge in 2022, “the district court rightly affirmed the right to information” and found that there was “clear clues for a mismatch between remuneration and income”, that is, for a claim to “fairness compensation”. Barefoot and Warner then withdraw their calling.
Since then, the second stage of the process has been about money: the measurement of the reimbursement claims for the past and the future. In September 2023, the district court of Barefoot and Warner sentenced to Anika Decker “for the use of the film productions” a “further appropriate participation”. For Decker, good news and a positive signal for the creative industry. However, the court considered the main part of Decker's claim to be statute -barred. The screenwriter should have filed a complaint much earlier, “because she knew that the films in the cinema were very successful”. If the cinema success was as great as in the case of “Keinohrhasen” and “Zweiohrküken”, according to the court, she would have “had to come up with the idea” that the evaluation by DVD, streaming or merchandising was also successful.
How do creative people measure their success?
Decker and her lawyer Nikolaus Reber had appealed against this verdict, which is why they were now put back in front of the chamber court. The fact that the presiding judge referred to the nuclear towers next to him right from the start could be interpreted as a sign that in his perception the matter could come to an end. Landwehrmeyer said that the Chamber Court considers the judgment of the regional court “essentially correct” and tends to “reject the applicant's appeal.”
So did Anika Decker have the obligation to inquire how well the film production in which it was involved, also on DVD, in the streaming services or on television? There is no “observation obligation”, said the presiding judge, but conversely you cannot close your eyes. Decker had aware of the above -average success of the two movies at an early stage that she expressly addressed the number of spectators in an interview with the FAZ from 2012. According to the court, it was therefore advisable to make the success of the follow -up evaluation knowledgeable.
The presiding judge took into account the fact that Anika Decker came to the hospital with sepsis with organ failure, in the intensive care unit in the intensive care unit in the intensive care unit in the intensive care unit, and then spent a long time in rehab. However, he pointed out that she had concluded contracts between 2010 and 2013 or founded a production company with her brother. Therefore, the court assumes that it could have taken note of the success of the follow -up evaluations.
Decker and her lawyer then withdrew their appointment, which ended a process on Wednesday afternoon, in which a lot was at stake for the creatives. He can recommend anyone who works in the film area that if he only had the idea of being successful in going to court and complaining within three years, Decker's lawyer Nikolaus Reber said to the FAZ whether this could be realized in the industry. Anyone who demands information as a screenwriter does not make themselves popular; Anyone who complains cannot expect to be committed again. Otherwise there can be “blacklisting” because for some actors in the industry you can now be considered a “difficult” for some actors in the industry as a nest threshold or, as it is happy to be called.
Anika Decker said half in the joke that if she has another cinema premiere, she will hand over the lawsuit directly at the premiere party on the stage. She is at a loss of how creative work. The success of a film is rarely transparent from the outside. “So when is it worth suing? And how do they react to which you have just worked well? I don't know how practical the case law is for us, ”said Decker. “It definitely strengthens the corporations.” Warner lawyer Nordemann did not want to comment on the end of the trial on Wednesday to the FAZ.
