Three’s the charm. 3 publishers lose 3 lawsuits on appeal · 2017-08-17 15:09 by Ben Williams

The appellate court in Munich, Germany today issued rulings in favor of Adblock Plus (eyeo) and against three separate appeals cases: RTL Interactive, ProSiebenSat.1 and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

So the German courts once again decided 100 percent in support of consumers’ right to block ads and 100 percent in favor of Adblock Plus.

It really does seem that three is the magic number for Adblock Plus, as all three of these companies have sued-and-lost against Adblock Plus (eyeo) before.

This new appellate court ruling confirms the previous decisions of the Munich district court in all three cases. The three separate plaintiffs had all lost their lawsuits in their first instances in the Munich court. Not satisfied with their losing court decisions the first time, all three companies appealed their three separate cases to a higher German court – and they lost all three cases again.

Even better, the new ruling contradicts an earlier finding of the appellate court in Cologne in the appeal of Axel Springer, which took issue with certain aspects of our whitelisting program. In particular, it does not consider it a breach of competition law for a company to maintain a whitelist (as we offer) and offer related (even paid) services to other companies (as they are not forced to accept them). It’s like when you ask your professor to re-examine your test score and they discover that you actually deserve an even better grade.

The higher court recommended to the plaintiffs that they focus their energies on finding alternative business models. We agree – Maybe they could look at Flattr!

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