The Higher Regional Court of Schleswig-Holstein (judgment of June 5, 2025, Ref.: 6 U 3/25) had to decide on the defendant’s appeal against a judgment of the Regional Court of Flensburg (judgment of December 23, 2024, Ref.: 8 O 166/24). This court had initially issued an interim injunction and thus granted the plaintiff injunctive relief. The OLG has now come to a different conclusion.

Background: Operation of a website after transfer of insolvency

The plaintiff was a co-partner in a company that operated escape rooms. There was a license agreement between him and the company in which, among other things, rights of use to the domain, names, designs and other content were transferred.

After insolvency proceedings were opened, the company was resold and continued. The website continued to contain graphics and texts created by the plaintiff.

The plaintiff saw this as a copyright infringement and initially called on the new operator to cease and desist via social media. When there was no response, he applied to the Flensburg Regional Court for a temporary injunction. The court granted the application and affirmed both the claim for injunctive relief and the grounds for the injunction due to the continued use.

What is the copyright relevance and why did the plaintiff fail?

The Higher Regional Court of Schleswig-Holstein overturned the decision. The decisive factor was not the status of the work or the question of rights of use, but the lack of a reason for the injunction.

The plaintiff did not attack the use until years after it first began and did not make any comments on the need for urgency. Although the court emphasized that urgency can exist if an infringement continues or further infringements are imminent, it does not apply if the rights holder remains inactive over a longer period of time and thus signals that there is no hurry to stop the infringements.

This is because the following applies in copyright law: urgency is not presumed by analogy with Section 12 (1) UWG. Anyone seeking interim legal protection must therefore actively present and credibly demonstrate urgency.

What should authors learn from this?

As soon as infringements are noticed, do not hesitate, but act immediately. Anyone who tolerates infringements over a longer period of time signals a lack of urgency and thus risks the failure of an application for a temporary injunction.

Since the presumption of urgency in copyright law is not derived by analogy with Section 12 (1) UWG, it must be made credible why immediate judicial intervention is necessary and why waiting for the main proceedings would be unreasonable.