In short. Under Section 44b(3), a rights holder’s mining reservation for online-accessible works is effective only in machine-readable form.
Definition: Section 44b(3) of Germany's Copyright Act makes a rights holder's reservation of text and data mining uses effective for online-accessible works only when expressed in machine-readable form. Text and data mining means automated analysis of digital or digitised works to obtain information, including patterns, trends and correlations.
Key facts
- As of 17 October 2026, Section 44b(2) and (3) permits copying lawfully accessible works for mining, subject to the rights holder's reservation, and requires deletion when the copies are no longer needed for mining.
- Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 requires an express reservation in an appropriate manner, including machine-readable means for publicly available online content.
- The government bill's explanation, Bundestag document 19/27426, page 89, allows a reservation in a legal notice or terms and conditions, provided it is machine-readable there.
- Section 60d separately permits mining for scientific research by eligible organisations and researchers under its own conditions.
What does the reservation change under Section 44b?
Section 44b(2) supplies a statutory permission to reproduce lawfully accessible works for mining. Subsection (3) makes that permission conditional on the rights holder having left those uses unreserved. For online-accessible works, machine readability is a condition of the reservation's effectiveness.
The provision concerns copying for automated analysis. Recital 18 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 says other uses should remain unaffected by a mining reservation. A website's reservation therefore has a defined copyright scope; its existence alone does not determine how a page appears in search results.
Does a sentence in website terms suffice?
The explanation on page 89 of the government bill requires an express declaration suited to automated mining processes. Its reference to terms and conditions preserves the machine-readability requirement. Placing a prohibition in a legal notice is therefore only part of the assessment: the declaration must also work in an automated process.
The Federal Court of Justice's notice of 20 May 2026 describes the Hamburg Higher Regional Court's judgment of 10 December 2025, case 5 U 104/24. The photographer failed to establish that the agency's natural-language reservation was machine-readable when the downloads occurred in the second half of 2021. The notice identifies the appeal as I ZR 281/25. The finding concerns the reservation and technology at the time of copying.
What can a machine-readable signal look like?
Section 44b specifies no mandatory protocol. A technical example appears in the TDM Reservation Protocol Community Group report of 10 May 2024. The protocol communicates a rights holder's reservation through an HTTP response header, a field sent by a server with its response:
tdm-reservation: 1
Within that protocol, the value 1 means mining rights are reserved. An optional tdm-policy field points to a policy describing conditions for obtaining permission. The report also defines HTML metadata for expressing a reservation. It is a Community Group report outside the W3C Standards Track. These are protocol mechanisms; the legal test remains the statutory machine-readability requirement.
Can a reservation exclude scientific research mining?
Section 60d(1) incorporates Section 44b's mining definition and lawful-access condition. It provides a separate permission for scientific research. Eligible users include qualifying research organisations, publicly accessible libraries and museums, and individual researchers pursuing non-commercial purposes.
Article 4(4) of Directive (EU) 2019/790 preserves the scientific research exception in Article 3. A reservation under the general mining exception therefore leaves the separate research permission applicable where its conditions are met.
Related terms
- German text and data mining exception
- TDM Reservation Protocol
- TDM-Reservation header
- When can a rights holder reserve commercial text mining rights?
FAQ
Can I reserve mining rights over a publicly accessible work?
Yes. Section 44b(3) provides for rights holders' reservations, with machine-readable form required for online-accessible works.
Does a reservation cover every use of my content?
Recital 18 of Directive (EU) 2019/790 says other uses should remain unaffected. The reservation operates within the mining exception's scope.
Must I use the TDM Reservation Protocol?
The statutory requirement concerns machine readability. The TDM Reservation Protocol report supplies technical mechanisms for communicating reservations, while effectiveness under German law depends on that requirement.
Sources
- Gesetze im Internet, "Urheberrechtsgesetz, Section 44b", consolidated text accessed 17 October 2026
- European Parliament and Council, "Directive (EU) 2019/790", 17 April 2019
- Deutscher Bundestag, "Drucksache 19/27426", 9 March 2021
- Bundesgerichtshof, "Verhandlungstermin am 3. September 2026 um 9:00 Uhr in Sachen I ZR 281/25 (Erstellen eines Datensatzes für KI-Training)", 20 May 2026
- Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol Community Group, "TDM Reservation Protocol (TDMRep)", 10 May 2024
- Gesetze im Internet, "Urheberrechtsgesetz, Section 60d", consolidated text accessed 17 October 2026
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