The risk of an injunction

Time and again, one has to hear from clients that, in the event of a warning that seems justified, one can simply sign the injunction, compensate for the legal fees and put the case under “stupid running”. But as the saying goes , “You can do it, but it’s crap”. The risk of reckless declarations of injunctions is simply not to be underestimated.

I have already written something about this in this post and in particular shed some light on preventive cease-and-desist declarations in this post.

However, even a correctly worded declaration of injunction, however rare, often carries extremely underestimated risks. Many signatories are often unaware of how long an injunction can last and the enormous risk of fines. Especially warning clubs live on the contractual penalties and rarely from the often very low initial warning fees. The Nuremberg-Fürth Regional Court recently had to decide on such a circumstance. It was a case that had been going on more than 10 years ago. At the time, a call centre had issued a declaration of injunction to a consumer protection association not to contact consumers unlawfully if they did not consent to contact them. In a case that became known to the club, they saw a violation of the declaration of injunction and demanded the contractual penalty. For various reasons, this was not due, but in response to the attempt to terminate the declaration of injunction by the call centre, which had previously been warned, the court replied that it would not see any right of termination under Paragraph 314 of the German Civil Code (BGB). The declaration of injunction was neither unclear nor had the legal situation changed sufficiently in the meantime to enable the entire injunction to be terminated. Because any conduct contrary to the declaration of injunction also constitutes a breach of the present provision of Paragraph 7(7) of the 2 point 2 Of the UWG does not constitute a change in the reasonableness of the omission.

In particular, however, the General Court emphasised that a period of 10 years would not constitute a reason for dismissal, since the undertaking had been entered into indefinitely. The company must therefore continue to fear that perhaps an employee or a sales representative, as stated here, could culpably (and therefore also simply negligently) violate the injunction. A pretty incalculable risk!

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.