Verbot unlauterer geschaeftlicher Handlungen und Mitbewerberschutz (General Clause and Competitor Protection)
Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb (UWG), §§ 3, 4
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force.
An unfair competition rule binding private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not denigrate or disparage a competitor's identifying marks, goods, services, activities, or personal or business circumstances.
- Do not assert or spread unproven facts capable of damaging a competitor's business or credit.
- Do not imitate a competitor's goods or services in a way that causes avoidable confusion about origin, unfairly exploits or impairs their reputation, or was achieved through dishonestly obtained knowledge or documents.
- Do not target a competitor for obstruction, which can include automated collection of that competitor's content or data aimed at impeding its business.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureNo
Private right of actionYes
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Unfair commercial acts are prohibited generally, and a commercial act directed at or reaching consumers is unfair where it does not conform to professional diligence and is capable of materially influencing the consumer's economic behaviour, alongside a fixed annex of acts that are always unlawful toward consumers.
Separately, a person acts unfairly toward a competitor by denigrating or disparaging that competitor's identifying marks, goods, services, activities, or personal or business circumstances; by asserting or spreading unproven facts capable of damaging a competitor's business or credit; by offering goods or services that imitate a competitor's, where that causes an avoidable deception of buyers about commercial origin, unfairly exploits or impairs the reputation of the imitated goods or services, or was achieved through dishonestly obtained knowledge or documents; or by targeted obstruction of a competitor.
A person who intentionally or negligently commits an unlawful commercial act under these provisions is liable to a competitor for the resulting damage. No German court decision applying the targeted-obstruction ground specifically to systematic web scraping of a competitor's site was verified against a primary source.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_web
Read the law
official consolidated Gesetz gegen den unlauteren Wettbewerb text, gesetze-im-internet.de