Jameda – Court Ruling (Germany, 2022)

The controller operates a doctor search and rating platform under www.jameda.de. It posts the basic data of physicians as well as a grey silhouette as a profile picture with the notice "Only jameda customers can post a profile picture" on the portal without their consent. Users can submit ratings in the form of grades and free text comments. The controller offers doctors a paid "premium package" with which they can add a photo and additional information to their profile and with which the defendant contributes to better findability on Google. In early 2018, the data subject who is an eye specialist learned that a negative review had been posted about her on the controller's website. She was rated there as "arrogant, unfriendly, unprofessional". The data subject asked for this evaluation to be deleted and for the author to be informed. The controller refused, as well as to the deletion of the data subject's basic data. In her lawsuit, the data subject demanded the deletion of her basic data from the controller's portal. While that was successful in the first instance, the Higher Regional Court dismissed the action on appeal by the controller. The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof - BGH) dismissed the data subject's appeal. The court found that the requirements of the right to erasure pursuant to Article 17(1) GDPR were not fulfilled. First, the processing was not unlawful pursuant to Article 17(1)(d) GDPR. As the processing was based on Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, the legitimate interests and fundamental rights of the data subject did not outweigh the interests of the controller. On the data subject's side, the court weighed her right to the protection of her personal data pursuant to Article 8 CFR, the not inconsiderable risks to her claim to social and professional standing (Article 7 CFR) as well as the economic success of her self-employed activity (Article 16 CFR). The court considered that the evaluations could directly affect competition with