Burda relies on Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek in developing TV SPIELFILM LIVE

TV on the smartphone, tablet or PC – at any time, at any location, this is the new distribution of the mass medium of television. TV Spielfilm, Germany's most widely used digital TV guide of BurdaNews, a Hubert Burda Media company, has started an "OTT (Over-The-Top) Platform" at the end of July, called TV Spielfilm Live. The Internet service allows access to more than 70 stations in best quality (many of them in HD), in full and without any time delay. With some 8 million Germans already regularly using the "TV Spielfilm Plus" digital program guide, TV Spielfilm expects a considerable number to also experience live TV.

Burda relied on Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek for the contractual, regulatory, and copyright preparation of the project. The Düsseldorf-based team, consisting of lawyers Michael Schmittmann, Marc Oliver Brock, and Dr. Isabel Skara, created the legal foundations of program distribution. In doing so, they were able to fall back on the experience with other platforms, such as Zattoo or M7's "mein Fernsehen," while the project represented a particular challenge. "We are glad that all participants pulled together," Michael Schmittmann was pleased to note, already looking ahead and appealing to the legislature: "It is about time for the federal government and the German states to adequately regulate this program distribution, as copyright law and broadcasting treaty are clearly still lagging behind the technology."

Counsel to BurdaNews/TV-Spielfilm
Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek:
Michael Schmittmann,
Marc Oliver Brock,
Dr. Isabel Skara (all IP/IT), all Düsseldorf