Google’s autocomplete function can infringe personality rights

Overturning two lower court rulings the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) decided that the words added to a search term by Google's autocomplete function can invade a person's personality rights (VI ZR 269/12). Subject to certain conditions Google therefore has to block these words.

The facts of this case were as follows:

The Plaintiff filed a claim for injunctive relief against Google as the autocomplete function added terms like "Scientology" or "fraud" to the plaintiff's name when entered in the Google search engine. Whereas lower courts denied protection on the grounds that the autocomplete function is only based on an algorithm taking into account which terms were often combined by other users, the BGH ruled in favour of the plaintiff.