Positive reviews may be reviewed and deleted if necessary

Positive reviews are a marketing tool for all marketplaces and review platforms. And there is always a legal dispute about how to deal with them. The physician rating platform Jameda has been ruled right in the second instance by the Munich Higher Regional Court, which ruled that the platform is allowed to check the validity of positive ratings and, if necessary, delete them.

In the case at hand, Jameda deleted ten positive reviews of a doctor. The doctor sued against the deletion. He demanded that Jameda republish the ten deleted reviews. The platform rejects this because the posts have been suspicious and unverifiable after review.

The Munich Higher Regional Court now upheld the Regional Court in that the deletion of the ratings did not constitute a breach of contract on the part of Jameda. Furthermore, the deletion of the ratings did not infringe the plaintiff’s rights to his established and practiced business pursuant to Section 823 (1) of the German Civil Code. 1 BGB, as there was no unlawful interference with the plaintiff’s right to his established and practiced business. Jameda was also not obliged to disclose the details of the algorithm used to detect suspicious reviews, as this would be a trade secret of the defendant that could not be disclosed.

The ruling definitely strengthens the rights of mediation and rating platforms, but also of communities, which logically also have to deal with many fake ratings.