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Court rejects millions in compensation for cartographer of euro banknotes

2022-05-25T11:05:52.291Z


Few images are printed as often as the map of Europe on the back of euro bills. The graphic artist who created them received a relatively small fee – and sued.


Enlarge image

Graphic distributed billions of times: Europe in a circle of stars

Photo:

M. Kaufmann / DER SPIEGEL

Billions of his Europe graphics are in circulation on euro banknotes, but the creator cannot hope for subsequent compensation for the time being: the Frankfurt Regional Court has rejected the lawsuit of an 88-year-old cartographer from Austria, who was employed by the European Central Bank (ECB) 5, 5 million euros for the use of his work.

The judgment that became known on Wednesday

(file number: 2-06 O 52/21)

is not final, as an appeal can still be lodged.

According to the court, the man had used, edited and changed various satellite images and digital files for his representation of the continent, shifted coastlines, fjords and islands and revised surface structures and colors.

His picture was used in the winning design in a design competition for the banknotes in 1996.

The Austrian transferred the rights of use to the Austrian National Bank against payment of 2180 euros.

The license later passed to the ECB, which had the Europe relief printed on the back of all euro banknotes.

The court did not consider the subsequent claim of 2.5 million euros immediately and another 3 million euros for the next 30 years to be lawful.

The judges justified their judgment by saying that the image file was used to design the banknotes, but at the same time deviated so far that an independent new work had been created.

Among other things, the color was changed and certain geographical elements were not adopted.

The euro banknotes have been put into circulation throughout the euro area since the beginning of 2002.

Since the plaintiff's graphic can be found on banknotes of all denominations, from 5 to 500 euros, there are currently more than 22 billion notes in circulation (data from the ECB from 2019).

mamk/dpa-AFX

Source: spiegel

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