Court case 15 U 340/25 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2026)

A rapper (the data subject) requested the operators of a search engine (the defendants) to delist a search result in March 2022. When the data subject’s name and the word “Nazi” were entered in the search engine, the search results referred to an article about a person who was allegedly deeply involved in the neo-Nazi scene. The article contained a picture that suggested this person had managed the sales booth for the data subject’s fashion label at an event. The defendants refused to remove the search result. Following this, the data subject filed an action for injunctive relief requesting the search result to be delisted. The defendants blocked the search results after a witness had stated in a hearing before the court of first instance that the person mentioned in the article had nothing to do with managing the data subject’s sales booth. The court of first instance granted the injunction under Article 17(1)(d) GDPR in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany. It held that the processing had been unlawful as the statement about the defendant having a business relationship with a person involved in neo-Nazi circles was found to be untrue. The defendants appealed this decision to the Higher Regional Court of Cologne. The data subject also appealed the decision as they found the court had wrongly limited the claim for injunctive relief to German territory. The court granted the defendants’ appeal and dismissed the data subject’s appeal. It held that the data subject had no right to an injunction under Article 17(1)(d) GDPR. According to the court, a legally enforceable claim for erasure and supplementary injunctive relief against a search engine operator to have a search result delisted exists only if the search engine operator has violated its duty to review the content based on a request from the data subject. Otherwise, the search engine operator is not liable for the display of search results that refer to unlawful content. In the present case, the defendants had not violated such duties: they were not required to recognise that the information in the article was untrue until this was confirmed by the witness in the hearing before the court of first instance. In addition, the court held that the data subject must provide the search engine operator with sufficient and relevant evidence proving that the information contained in the search results is manifestly inaccurate if they dispute the accuracy of the search results. A mere assertion and the presentation of evidence during litigation are generally insufficient. As the data subject had simply asserted that the person with neo-Nazi connections had not managed their sales booth, the processing at issue had been necessary for exercising right of freedom of expression and information within the meaning of Article 17(3)(a) GDPR.