The Federal Supreme Court of Germany has decided to re-examine a trial against the developers of the Adblock Plus advertising blocker. The case was initiated by the Axel Springer media account, which is seeking to ban the use of advertising blockers, claiming that such browser extensions alter the content of websites in a way that infringes on copyright laws.
The defendant in the case is the developer of Adblock Plus, EYEO. Legal battles between German publishers and EYEO have been ongoing for over a decade. Initially, publishers tried to argue that ad blocking was anticompetitive and harmful to their business interests. However, the court ruled in favor of users’ rights to control the content they see on their devices.
Subsequently, publishers attempted to claim that ad blockers violated copyright laws by altering website content. Despite their efforts, the court sided with Adblock Plus developers, stating that the software only helps users customize their browsing experience without tampering with site code. In 2023, a higher court reaffirmed that modifying page displays in a browser does not constitute copyright infringement.
Axel Springer then appealed to the Supreme Court, alleging that the Court of Appeal had not fully considered the arguments regarding Adblock Plus’s alleged violations. As a result, the Federal Supreme Court of Germany has partially overturned the previous decision and ordered a retrial. The court will reexamine whether Adblock Plus’s actions truly involve the manipulation of site code and if such actions breach copyright laws.
During the upcoming trial, Axel Springer’s legal team plans to argue that the DOM Nodes tree and CSS constructs manipulated by Adblock Plus constitute protected software code, therefore warranting copyright protection. They also intend to reference recent cases involving cheats for computer games, where courts ruled that non-code-altering cheats did not infringe on copyrights. The outcome of this retrial could have significant implications for the future regulation of ad blockers and online content modification.