Schutzfristen ohne Ende? Was es mit dem Streit um Gemälde-Fotografien auf sich hat

The city of Mannheim has taken legal action against the Wikimedia Foundation because of 17 photos of paintings from the Reiss-Engelhorn museum’s collection. All photos are of works that are no longer protected by copyright. Users had uploaded them to Wikimedia without the photographer’s consent. Likely, the photos weren’t protected by copyright (in the narrow sense). However, apart from copyright protection for original photos, German law also provides a neighbouring right protection for non-original photos. This blog post looks at the boundaries of this neighboring right and the legal uncertainty it causes.