The idea should be reasonably creepy for most: an article appears on the Internet, in which false claims are drawn up about their own person, in the worst case the news even spreads over several media. And if you google you, you get the false messages suggested as current results.
In such a situation, those affected must be quick if they want to prevent the lies from spreading further. However, going against every medium or any other content provider (blogs, social media accounts etc.) can take, and is not particularly effective if in doubt if, for example, these are not located in Germany. The way over the large search engine operators seems easier.
After all, they are who, with their search results, ensure that the content becomes visible and spread. This is where the so -called list claim comes into play: operators of search engines are generally obliged to delete illegal content from their results.
Manager successfully goes against search engine operators
But as always, the devil is in the details: The search engine operators are rather tangible, but if in doubt, do not move faster when it comes to extinguishing content or making it invisible. Here may be two Decisions of the LG Frankfurt a. M. relevant, which recently dealt with the requirements of such a right to list (Resolutions from 14.03.2025 – 2-03 O 93/25 and 2-03 O 89/25).
Both decisions concerned the case of a manager of an international group, which was made against an article that had been distributed by a content provider based in the United States. In the search results indicator at Bing and Yahoo, the article was further displayed despite an injunction against the provider, also as a preview text (so -called snippet), whereby the specific, previously prohibited statement was readable.
After the manager initially submitted the injunction against the content provider of the article to the search engine operator and requested the list of the article, nothing happened, which is why he finally went against it and before the LG Frankfurt a. M. an injunction against the operators.
Court does not require proof of delivery to content providers
The court directed his claim directly Art. 17 Abs. 1 a) DS-GVO i.V.m. Art. 7 and 8 Grch here. After Art. 17 Paragraph 1 a) GDPR are entitled to deletion of the data that are affected by inadmissible data processing. In the eyes of the Frankfurt judges, this was enough to request a list from the search engine operators as responsible in this case. This corresponds to the case law of the BGH from the past years. The federal judges consider the right to list to the GDPR, and other legal bases for national law are excluded in such cases.
What is exciting for those affected and their lawyers is above all that the court did not request prior delivery of the injunction to the content provider for the right of list. So far, operators such as Google have made it a prerequisite for hiding search results that the content provider had already been delivered to the prohibition, as lawyer Jörn Claßen, who represented the manager in the procedure beck-up-to-date explained. Those affected then had to provide formal evidence.
“A foreign transfer in particular outside the EU is time -consuming and can sometimes take several months. However, it is not to be obtained to the person concerned who has obtained an injunction against the content provider, but that the content -violating content is still displayed in the search results despite a judicial decision,” says a press release from the law firm.
Like that LG Frankfurt a. M. It already had it in 2017 LG Cologne seen. At the time, the Rhineland dishes also decided that those affected “could not be expected to carry out a costly procedure against a company based abroad and to obtain a legally binding title before the website is no longer displayed in the search results of the Bing search engine.”
Editor Beck-Aktuell, Maximilian Amos, April 29, 2025.
