Court of Appeal of Brussels - 2021/AR/205

Hof van Beroep - 2021/AR/205
Court:	Cour d'appel de Bruxelles/ Hof van beroep Brussel (Belgium)
Jurisdiction:	Belgium
Relevant Law:	Article 6 GDPR Article 20 GDPR Article 21 GDPR Art. 209 WER
Decided:
Published:
Parties:
National Case Number/Name:	2021/AR/205
European Case Law Identifier:
Appeal from:	GBA 02/2021
Appeal to:	Not appealed
Original Language(s):	Dutch
Original Source:	Arrest van 26 mei 2021 van het Marktenhof AR 205 (in Dutch)
Initial Contributor:	Enzo Marquet

The Court of Appeal held that the exploitation of a social media fan page of an artist can continue after the exploitation contract expired based on legitimate interest of the exploiter as long as this is in line with the right of reproduction and the original contract.

English Summary

Facts

After a contractual relationship with the music producer who owned the Facebook fanpage of the musician, the latter wanted to get back control of this page. The DPA had already issued (14/2020) an order to transfer the page on the basis of data portability but the order was annulled by the Court of Appeal. The litigation chamber of the DPA issued this second decision (02/2021) after the page was finally transferred to the musician. The defendants appealed this decision.

Dispute

Is the processing of personal data based on contract in the context of artist exploitation, still valid after the expiration of the contract?

Holding

The Court of Appeals holds that the (contractually agreed) exploitation of an artist (page), even though the name is the same as the person, falls under commercial practices and right to exploitation, and not data processing. As such, there is no link with copyright.

The personal data are in any case very limited (if there would be any processing of personal data at all), and the exploitation is a legitimate interest of the defendant, the interest of it is much more important. On top of that, the exploitation helps the complainant grow in outreach.

The Court of Appeal holds that the processing of data would still be legitimate as there is a legal ground for it (the exploitation contract). Since the defendants sufficiently prove that they exploited the fan page in accordance with the justification performance of a contract and in line with the producer's right of reproduction contained in Article Xl.209 WER (Economic Code) and all this in return for payment of royalties to the complainant, no violation of Article 21(1) juncto Article 12(3) can be shown by the DPA.

Comment

Share your comments here!

Further Resources

Share blogs or news articles here!

English Machine Translation of the Decision

The decision below is a machine translation of the Dutch original. Please refer to the Dutch original for more details.