Court case BGH VI ZR 476/18 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

The applicant was an authorised officer of one of those companies. In 2015, several articles appeared on the website of a US-American company, whose objective, according to its own statements, is "to make a lasting contribution to fraud prevention in the economy and society through active education and transparency", by critically examining these companies. One of these articles was illustrated with photos of the plaintiffs. The business model of the website's operator was in turn critically reported, among other things with the accusation that she was trying to blackmail companies by first publishing negative reports and then offering to delete the reports or prevent negative reporting for a so-called protection fee. Google was asked to delete the thumbnails. The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof - BGH) stayed proceedings and referred two questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling: - Is it compatible with the rights of the data subject in Article 7,8 CFR to weigh up the possibility to file an interim injunction as legal protection and receive a preliminary clarification on the right to get delisted as a decisive factor in the decision on conflicting rights and interests arising from Article 17(3)(a) GDPR? - Can the BGH oblige the defendant to pay the costs if third parties placed photos which are shown as a thumbnail in the search engine of the defendant, even if the third party's website is linked but not specifically named when the thumbnail is displayed by the search engine and the resulting context is not displayed by the internet search service?