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 Germany: BGH issues decision on cookie consent based on Planet49 case

 The German Federal Court of Justice ('BGH') issued, on 28 May 2020, a decision ('the Decision') on consent to cookies. In particular, the BGH had suspended the proceedings by decision on 5 October 2017 and submitted questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union ('CJEU') regarding the interpretation of Directive 2002/58/EC (data protection directive for electronic communications), Directive 95/46/EC (data protection directive) and the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679) ('GDPR') with regard to the effectiveness of consent to the setting of cookies by using a pre-ticked checkbox. The CJEU had answered these questions in its judgment of 1 October 2019 in Planet49 GmbH v. Bundesverband der Verbraucherzentralen und Verbraucherverbände – Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e.V. (C-673/17).

In this context, the BGH has decided on consent requirements for telephone advertising and the storage of cookies on the end device of a user, overturned the appeal judgment, and restored the first instance conviction of the defendant. 

Moreover, the BGH held that, with regards to telemarketing, the defendant must refrain from issuing and reimburse any warning costs as there was a lack of effective consent to telephone advertising. In addition, the BGH held that the mode of the declaration of consent was designed to confront the consumer with an elaborate process of selecting partner companies from the list in order to induce the consumer to refrain from this selection and instead let the defendant choose the advertising partner. Furthermore, the BGH held that this did not constitute valid consent because the user could not be considered to have full knowledge of the situation.  

Finally, the BGH granted the plaintiff an injunction with regards to the above procedure for gaining consent for the storage of cookies, stating that the consent provided for by the defendant in the form of general terms and conditions, which allows the information stored on their end device to be retrieved using cookies by means of a pre-ticked checkbox, represents an unreasonable disadvantage for the user. 

You can read the press release, only available in German, here.  

UPDATE (6 July 2020)

BGH publishes full text of decision on cookie consent

The BGH published, on 6 July 2020, the full text of the Decision. 

You can read the Decision, only available in German, here

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