Domain Law

Judgement of VG Düsseldorf (Administrative Court Dusseldorf) of 18/05/2009, file number: 27 L 9/09

Authorities of a federal state are not allowed, in case of an offence to the gambling treaty, to disconnect the domains of the corresponding web sites. Federal states are basically limited in their administrational rights after the state principle. The disconnection of a site leads to the worldwide unattainability. In this case, the competence of the regional authorities is trespassed; therefore, the disconnection order is illegal.

Judgement of BGH (Federal Supreme Court) of 18/12/2008, file number: I ZR 200/06

The component "Puppenkiste" is in the company sign "Augsburger Puppenkiste" to label the marking of a puppet theatre originally weak sign and, therefore, without distinguishing characteristic to assert itself as a catchword-like advice to the company...

Judgement of LG Köln (Regional Court Cologne) of 18/05/2009, file number: 81 O 220/08

The community Welle has no right to the domain "welle.de", because somebody else had already the idea for the domain use long before and the domain name consists of a word which shows a material name and is understood because of unawareness of the community. “Welle” is understood as a thing, as long as it is called without certain complementary quality description as for example "community". Therefore is valid here concerning the domain the priority.

Judgement of BGH (Federal Supreme Court) of 19/02/2009, file number: I ZR 135/06

We had already reported about the press release 39/2009 to the judgement, now the full text is given.

The registration of a domain name can fulfil only by presentation of special circumstances the facts of an unfair competitor's impediment and justify a claim to delete the domain name.
Such circumstances are not already given if the domain owner registers a huge number of domain names to offer them to potential prospective customers; to the purchase or to the payable use, and one of these domain names...

Judgement of LG Berlin (Regional Court Berlin) of 08/07/2008, file number: 27 O 536/08

A web page operator has to provide for the fact that personality-abusive statements disappear completely from his Internet offer. Therefore he is also obliged to block any web search engine hits not to show them.