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: | 26.05.2021 |
| Published: | |
| Parties: | |
| National Case Number/Name: | 2021/AR/205 |
| European Case Law Identifier: | |
| Appeal from: | APD/GBA (Belgium) 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 of Brussels held that a music company could continue to manage the social media fanpage of a musician following the termination of an artist management agreement. The Court annulled a fine against the music company by the Belgian DPA, stating that the company still had a legitimate interest to manage the fanpage based on its intellectual property rights to the artist's music.
English Summary
Facts
After a contractual relationship with the music company who owned the Facebook fanpage of the musician (including their full name), the latter wanted to get back control of this page. The DPA issued an order to transfer the page (APD/GBA - 14/2020) on the basis of data portability, but this order was annulled by the Court of Appeal. The litigation chamber of the DPA then issued a second decision (APD/GBA - 02/2021) which imposed a fine of €10,000 on the music company for not transferring the fanpage of the musician to them, for not transferring the fanpage of the musician to them, after they had exercised their right to data portability and right to object. The DPA imposed this second decision based on the lack of consent from the artist to use its name and the termination of the management agreement. The defendant has now appealed this decision.
According to the defendant, the DPA was incorrect to find that the lawfulness of the processing of the complainant's personal data under Article 6(1)(b) stopped on 3 November 2019, when the management agreement between the artist and the defendant was terminated. The defendant argues that the termination of the management agreement has no effects on its rights to manage the Facebook page. Its right to maintain the Facebook page was not based on the management agreement. Instead, the intellectual property rights to the musical works of the artist are relevant. As the exclusive licensee of certain musical works of the artist, the defendant is entitled to use the name and image of the performing artist of these musical works for the purpose of marketing and commercialisation of the music. These rights derive from various agreements between the company and claimant (not including the management agreement) which also involve a third party music producer.
Holding
The Court of Appeal annulled the DPA's decision.
It held that, despite the termination of the management agreement, the music company still had a legitimate interest to manage the fanpage. This is because, according to an artist agreement of 26 July 2008, a license agreement of 20 November 2015, and in line with the rights of the music producer pursuant to Article XI.209 of the Belgian Code of Economic Law ('Wetboek van Economisch recht', 'WEB'), the music company is exclusively entitled to use the name and image of the music artist of the musical works which are the subject matter of those agreements, for the duration of the copyright rights (70 years from the first recording). The complainant is paid royalties in return. In this context, the Facebook page was set up and used, among other things, to promote the artist's name and promote the sale of the relevant music works. The Court stated that the personal data on the fanpage are in any case very limited, and that the legitimate interest of the defendant in processing this data, which helps the complainant grow in outreach, is more important. No violation of Article 21(1) read in conjunction with Article 12(3) could therefore be found by the DPA.
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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.
