Law note · European Union
Germany, Leistungsschutzrecht fur Presseverleger (sections 87f-87h Urheberrechtsgesetz)
This German member-state ancillary copyright law (not an EU instrument) gave press publishers the right to prohibit commercial search engines and news aggregators from reproducing parts of 'press products' beyond mere headlines, aiming to require platforms such as Google News to pay licensing fees. In practice it failed: publishers who feared losing traffic granted free licences, and Google displayed only unprotected headlines.
The CJEU declared it inapplicable with retroactive effect in Case C-299/17 (2019) because Germany had not notified the European Commission under the TRIS Directive (98/34/EC); it was subsequently superseded by Germany's transposition of Digital Single Market (DSM) Art. 15.
Primary source: Bundesgesetzblatt
CJEU Case C-299/17