The Heidelberg Regional Court rejected an employee's
claim for access to information about the employer's processing
of his personal data insofar as this data is merely located in
backup files of his email account. Restoring such data was said to
represent disproportionate effort for the controller in this
individual case (judgment of February 6, 2020 – 4 O
6/19).
Most recently, the Baden-Württemberg Regional Labor Court
and the Cologne Higher Regional Court continued to
interpret the right of access under Art. 15 GDPR very
broadly.
In the matter underlying the ruling of the Heidelberg Regional
Court, the plaintiff, as a former member of the controller's
managing board, requested access to data from the controller under
Art. 15 GDPR as well as the handover of a copy of all available
personal data that had been processed (principal claim), and, in
the alternative, information about personal email data that had
been processed for a specified period of approximately
