Warning costs
Warning costs are the costs of a warning , such as the cost of hiring a lawyer . In principle, they are to be paid by the person who issued the warning, e.g. hiring the lawyer.
Compulsory reimbursement in Germany
In principle, warning costs are to be reimbursed as compensation under the conditions of contractual or tortious compensation standards.
However, this did not do justice to the practical needs, especially in the practically most important area, competition law. Therefore, the BGH has started to reimburse the warning costs incurred by the owner of the property right as reimbursement of expenses in the event of a warning due to competition or property rights violations according to the rules of management without an order in accordance with § 677 , § 683 sentence 1, § 670 BGB . This was justified by the fact that the warning served to remedy the unlawful disturbance emanating from the person warned to which the interferer is obliged, and that the warning person, by avoiding an otherwise threatened costly legal dispute, was in the objective interest and at least the presumed will of the infringer acts.
Legal limitation
The jurisprudence, according to which management without a mandate (GoA) is generally to be accepted in the event of warnings, is now out of date, as the Federal Court of Justice has recently been more cautious in applying the GoA (see for example heir seeker decision)
For competition law, in turn, the GoA assumption was replaced by the introduction of Section 12 UWG and for copyright law by Section 97a (1) UrhG , which limits the value in dispute of the injunctive relief and removal claim in simple cases, which are usually present, to 1000 euros .
copyright
For individual cases in the area of copyright law , Section 97a UrhG also provides for the ability to be reimbursed for warning costs regardless of fault, but with a limit on the amount.
Amount of warning costs in Germany
The amount of the costs for legal warning activities is determined according to the Lawyers' Remuneration Act (RVG) and consists of the fee rate and the amount in dispute . Apart from the statutory framework, the fee rate is determined by the circumstances of the individual case, such as the difficulty of processing. A fee rate of 1.0 to 1.8 is often used. The amount in dispute is determined by the amount of damage threatened by the infringement.
