The court ordered DENIC to remove illegal domain names.

In Germany, the Supreme Court ruled that DENIC, the administrator of the country's national domain (.DE), must remove from the zone all domain names that in any way violate third-party rights or moral standards. The court ordered DENIC to immediately remove such a domain name if it was notified of the violation.

The German Supreme Court took notice of this issue because of the registration of several domains in the Bavarian region that included the German word "regierung," meaning "government" (for example, regierung-oberfranken.de). The Bavarian government, which owns the domain regierung.oberfranken.bayern.de, asked DENIC to remove the domain regierung-oberfranken.de, claiming it had no connection to the official Bavarian government website and could mislead users.

The lawsuit aimed to establish the basis for the domain name deletion policy. The court recognized that even a rank-and-file DENIC employee, even without any legal knowledge of the domain industry, could independently determine that not everyone has the right to register a domain with the name of a local government, and certainly not a private company located somewhere in Panama.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court emphasized that DENIC can only delete domain names upon receipt of a clearly legitimate complaint. Only then is it obligated to delete the domain that gave rise to the complaint.