In 2000, the Hamburg Court of Appeal decided that the use of the domain name "mitwohnzentrale.de" (housing-cooperative.de) was not in line with German competition law, since the domain name owner did not represent all the housing cooperatives active in Germany. The court held that the use of such a generic domain without a distinctive addition would lead to an unfair channeling of consumers seeking housing cooperative services on the Internet to the domain name owner's web site.
The Federal Supreme Court has in the meantime overturned this ruling, holding that it is generally permissible to use generic terms as domain names. The established principles of unfair competition case law do not extend to the use of such generic designations. By using a generic domain name, the service provider does not directly influence the customers of its competitors. The argument that generic domains should be kept free for all internet users - in keeping with the provisions of the Trademark Act - was
