DUBLIN, Ireland—Germany’s finance minister has won an important victory in the country’s courts with the ruling that the government is not obliged to divide the proceeds of Germany’s third-generation (3G) licensing process equally among the 16 federal states.
The German 3G licenses were auctioned at the peak of “mobile fever” in Europe and earned the government more than 50 million euro (US$44 million). Three of the federal states took the case, believing they were entitled to a share of the revenues, but the Constitutional Court ruled that the government is responsible for telecommunications, and therefore, entitled to keep the full amount.
