Injunctive debtor is liable for Google Cache!

Anyone who has read about the blog here in recent months will have noticed that I am now very critical of the concept of a declaration of injunction. See this article, this article and this blog post on this topic.

The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main now provides another good reason, especially for IT companies, why one should at least not sign a declaration of injunction without advice and why it can still be very dangerous even then.

In the case decided here, an injunction was also signed for a breach of competition, but the corresponding content was, as usual, still available via the Google cache. The debtor did not make a request to Google for the deletion of the relevant content until two weeks after the signature of the declaration of injunction.

The Higher Regional Court considered that the infringement of the competition in a Google snippet was misleading about the rights of the consumer under Paragraph 5 I 2(7) of the UWG and also held that the debtor was liable for an injunction on the basis of an omission.

Admittedly, a debtor has grds for the independent action of third parties. not to stand up. However, it is required to influence third parties whose actions benefit him economically if he has to seriously reckon with an infringement and also has legal and effective influence on the conduct of third parties.

The court also found it reasonable to have the deletion of the snippet deleted faster than after just two weeks via Google’s webmaster tools, even though the content on the actual page has already been removed. In addition to the declaration of injunction, the debtor was once again faced with an injunction and all the associated costs.

Incidentally, the case concerned – once again – a misrepresentation of a manufacturer’s warranty, a circumstance that is repeatedly the subject of warnings under competition law (see, for example, this article).

Author: Marian Härtel

Marian Härtel ist Rechtsanwalt und Fachanwalt für IT-Recht mit einer über 25-jährigen Erfahrung als Unternehmer und Berater in den Bereichen Games, E-Sport, Blockchain, SaaS und Künstliche Intelligenz. Seine Beratungsschwerpunkte umfassen neben dem IT-Recht insbesondere das Urheberrecht, Medienrecht sowie Wettbewerbsrecht. Er betreut schwerpunktmäßig Start-ups, Agenturen und Influencer, die er in strategischen Fragen, komplexen Vertragsangelegenheiten sowie bei Investitionsprojekten begleitet. Dabei zeichnet sich seine Beratung durch einen interdisziplinären Ansatz aus, der juristische Expertise und langjährige unternehmerische Erfahrung miteinander verbindet. Ziel seiner Tätigkeit ist stets, Mandanten praxisorientierte Lösungen anzubieten und rechtlich fundierte Unterstützung bei der Umsetzung innovativer Geschäftsmodelle zu gewährleisten.