Tell-a-friend verdict

The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) announced an important verdict (I ZR208/12) on the (im)permissibility of recommendation emails on 12 September 2013. The circumstances the BGH examined were as follows: The claimant, without having given his permission, received repeated product recommendations from the defendant, who had established a recommendation function on her website where she was named as the sender of the recommendation email. As a result, the complainant wanted aninjunction against the defendant. The lower-court judgments (Local and State Courts in Cologne) had rejected this, on the grounds that the defendant could not be held responsible for the misuse of the recommendation function by a third party.