Customer Ratings on Amazon (Kundenbewertungen auf Amazon)
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rmany Customer Ratings on Amazon (Kundenbewertungen auf Amazon) Decision of the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) 20 February 2020 – Case No. I ZR 193/18 (ECLI:DE:BGH:2020:200220UIZR193.18.0) Basic Law, Art. 5(1), first sentence; Act against Unfair Competition (UWG), Sec. 3(1), Sec. 3a, Sec. 5(1), first sentence and second sentence, No. 1, Sec. 8(1), first sentence, Sec. 8(3), No. 2; Therapeutics Advertising Act, Sec. 11(1), first sentence, No. 11
Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich 2020
Keywords Supplier responsibility for third parties Platform liability Own statements versus others’ statements Customer rating systems on online trading platforms Freedom of opinion and information Misleading statements a)
The supplier of a product offered on the online trading platform Amazon is not liable under competition law for customer ratings not occasioned by that supplier if it does not adopt these ratings as its own. For the assessment of whether a person against whom a claim of anticompetitive advertising is raised adopts others’ statements as their own, a crucial factor is whether that person in an outwardly evident manner assumes responsibility for the contents of others’ statements or creates the imputable impression of identifying with them. This standard is also applicable in therapeutics advertising law. b) Whether the offering on the online trading platform Amazon establishes a guarantor status with the legal obligation to prevent a deception via customer ratings is determined by the circumstances of the concrete individual case and requires a weighing assessment. c) In the course of this assessment it must be considered that customer ratings systems on online trading platforms are societally desirable and enjoy protection under constitutional law. The interest of consumers in commenting on products and, prior to purchase, obtaining or exchanging information about characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of a product from different sources, among them the ratings of other customers, is protected by the freedom of opinion and information enshrined in Art. Translated by Allison Felmy.
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Basic Law, Art. 5(1)
5(1), first sentence, of the Basic Law. Where an offer concerns medicinal products or medical devices, however, it can be necessary to take the protected legal interest of public health into consideration in this assessment. d) If the supplier of a product offered for sale on an online trading platform itself issues misleading or falsified customer ratings or pays for them, or if they can for other reasons be attributed to the supplier as advertising, that supplier is liable as offender, or as the case may be, joint offender, in a competition-law violation. …
Facts: 1 The plaintiff, the Verband Sozialer Wettbewerb e.V., is a registered association whose tasks according to its by-laws include the protection of its members’ commercial interests. 2 The defendant sells kinesiology tapes. In 2013 it advertised the tapes with the statement that they are sui
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