Background
The claimant, a very well-known German singer who became a mother in December 2021, sued over a video published on RTL.de in May 2022. The video incorporated photographs and footage showing her with her baby and mother during a walk, at an outdoor café in Munich, and beside a car at Lake Ammersee. The images had been taken without her consent, apparently from a distance and while a photographer followed her. The accompanying commentary described her first public appearance with the baby and portrayed her positively as handling motherhood well.
The publisher had purchased rights to use the photographs and later issued a contractual undertaking to cease using the images and portions of the accompanying text. The singer sought at least €25,000 in monetary compensation for infringement of her general right of personality and right to her own image. The Berlin Regional Court awarded the requested relief, but the Berlin Court of Appeal reversed and dismissed the claim. The singer appealed to the Federal Court of Justice.
The Court’s Holding
The Federal Court of Justice held that the image publication was unlawful. Because the material was published for journalistic purposes by a telemedia provider, the media privilege under Article 85(2) GDPR and section 23(1), sentence 4 of the German Interstate Media Treaty applied, and legality was governed by the graduated protections in sections 22 and 23 of the Art Copyright Act. The singer had not consented, and the images did not qualify as portraits from the sphere of contemporary history. Although the public had some interest in the first-time motherhood of a prominent singer, the report primarily satisfied curiosity about her private life and contributed little to public debate.
The singer’s image and personality rights outweighed that limited informational interest. The scenes were thematically private moments of leisure and parental attention, even though they occurred in public places. Their protection was reinforced by Article 6(1) and (2) of the Basic Law, which safeguards family life and the parent-child relationship.
Nevertheless, the Court affirmed the denial of monetary compensation. Such compensation requires a serious personality-rights violation for which no other remedy provides satisfactory redress, assessed from all the circumstances. Here, the images were harmless and predominantly flattering or neutral, caused no reputational injury or disparagement, showed no especially intimate conduct, and were taken in publicly accessible locations. The publisher also had not persistently repeated the violation after being put on notice. The infringement therefore was not sufficiently grave to require damages, and the singer’s appeal was dismissed with costs.
Key Takeaways
- For journalistic telemedia publications covered by the media privilege, German courts assess image publication under sections 22 and 23 of the Art Copyright Act.
- A public location does not eliminate privacy protection when photographs capture private leisure or parental interaction without a conscious turn toward publicity.
- An unlawful image publication does not automatically support monetary compensation; the infringement must be exceptionally serious and inadequately remedied by other means.
Why It Matters
The judgment distinguishes the threshold for finding an image publication unlawful from the substantially higher threshold for awarding personality-rights damages. Media outlets may violate a celebrity’s image rights even when reporting on benign conduct in public if the material adds little to public debate and intrudes upon private family interactions.
At the same time, German law reserves monetary compensation for serious cases in which other remedies are inadequate. Courts must consider the publication’s reach and persistence, reputational consequences, motive, fault, context, and the availability of injunctive protection, while avoiding a disproportionate chilling effect on press freedom.