Judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-145/10

Court of Justice of the European Union PRESS RELEASE No 132/11 Luxembourg, 1 December 2011 Press and Information Judgment in Case C-145/10 Eva-Maria Painer v Standard VerlagsGmbH and others A portrait photograph enjoys the same protection as that conferred by copyright on any other work However, the media may publish such a photograph, without the consent of its author, if the object of its publication is to assist the police, in a criminal investigation, to find a missing person Ms Painer is a freelance photographer, photographing, in particular, children in nurseries and day care centres. In the course of her work, she took several photographs of Natascha K. (choosing the background, deciding on the pose and facial expression, and producing and developing those photographs). After Natascha K., then aged 10, was abducted in 1998, the Austrian police launched a search appeal for which Ms Painers photographs were used. Following the young girls escape and prior to her first public appearance, five newspaper publishers, four German and one Austrian, published those photographs in certain newspapers1 and known websites without, however, indicating the name of the photographer, or indicating a name other than Ms Painers as the photographer. Several of those publications also published a photo-fit, created by computer from those photographs, which, in the absence of a more recent photograph of the young girl until her first public appearance, represented her supposed image. Since...