User rights to photos: copyright as a weapon in e-commerce?

One picture says more than a thousand words - a saying that applies even more in the online trading sector. Without photos, no products could achieve significant turnover. Practically all sellers complain about the extremely widespread self-service mentality of their competitors with respect to product photos that have been made at great effort and expense. Dealers and IT service providers, however, regard this "photo theft" as at most a peccadillo. In two cases with similar fact patterns, the Berlin Regional Court, in actions for an injunction by a perfume manufacturer against Amazon (2015 BeckRS 07179) and against Google Shopping (2015 BeckRS 07175), held that the product photos made and licensed for the plaintiff could be used on sales platforms neither in the overview pages of the different suppliers nor in individual offers by third parties or by Amazon itself. This infringes the right of the plaintiff as holder of the exclusive user rights to make the photos available to the public.