Germany’s highest court rules on cookie consent

the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, “BGH”), issued a decision in case Planet49 (I ZR 7/16) on consent requirements for the use of cookies and telemarketing activities. In this case, the BGH suspended its proceedings in 2017 and submitted questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) for a preliminary ruling regarding the effectiveness of obtaining consent for the use of cookies through a pre-ticked checkbox. The CJEU answered these questions in its judgement in Planet49 GmbH v. Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e.V. (C-673/17) stating that the pre-ticket boxes for cookie use do not constitute valid consent by the user. The BGH now stated that the consent provided in the form of general terms and conditions, allowing for information stored on the users end device to be retrieved using cookies via a pre-ticked checkbox represents an unreasonable disadvantage for the user.