[Open-Legislation] verdict access

[Stefan Sels]

Hi open-legislation folks,

I just read that in Germany after a law is made, the resulting verdicts 
within Germany are considered free, but collecting them into a database 
is considered commercial use and thereby forbidden by the court.

According to SPIEGEL:

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,755813,00.html (German)

Google translated to English

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,755813,00.html&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com

Even more strange, a private company owned by invstors called "Juris" 
(http://www.juris.de/jportal/index.jsp) has a contract to aggregate 
those verdicts for one year exclusivly.

SPIEGEL claims they make an 28% interest with the investment in that 
company. I wonder how this is legal at all: Having "open access" to 
verdicts, preventing to collect them into a database AND giving an 
exclusive license to do exactly that to a privately held company.

Sounds like a really bad fuckup (to be honest).

As IANAL can somebody with juridical knowledge confirm this situation? 
What is the situation about verdicts in other EU countries?

If this is current reality, it needs to be changed of course....

Greetings from Cologne,
    Stefan