Overview

• The Federal Court of Justice overturned part of a Hamburg appeals ruling in Axel Springer’s lawsuit against Eyeo and sent the case back for further examination.
• The court said it cannot be ruled out that website bytecode or generated code is protected as a computer program and that ad blocking could infringe exclusive rights through modifications.
• Lower courts must now determine the technical facts and legal boundaries, a process Mozilla says could take years before a final outcome.
• Mozilla warned the revived case could chill development of extensions used for privacy and accessibility and might prompt browser vendors to restrict extension capabilities.
• Axel Springer argues Adblock Plus unlawfully interferes with the programming code of its sites under §§69a/69c of German copyright law, while Eyeo has dismissed that theory as almost absurd.