Keeping your website's legal notice complete and up to date

Anyone doing business online must maintain a complete legal notice (Impressum), regardless of company size, legal form or industry. If it is missing, incomplete or outdated, cease-and-desist letters and fines are a risk.

In short: Under § 5 DDG (the German Digital Services Act), every business website needs a provider identification with details such as name, address, authorised representatives, commercial register entry and VAT ID number. All companies and self-employed people with a business online presence are affected. Missing or incomplete details are among the most common grounds for cease-and-desist letters in competition law and can be punished with fines of up to €50,000.

Who is subject to the legal notice requirement?

The legal notice requirement under § 5 DDG applies to all business online offerings, from sole proprietorships to GmbHs (limited liability companies) to large corporations, regardless of revenue or website size. Besides classic company websites, it also covers online shops, blogs with advertising revenue and social media profiles used for business purposes. What matters is not the size of the company but the business character of the offering. Purely private, non-commercial sites without a profit motive are not covered. In practice, however, a complete legal notice is worthwhile in cases of doubt, because the line between private and business use is not always easy to draw. Which of these obligations apply to your company specifically is shown by a tool such as Company Audit, which checks compliance requirements individually for your business.

What details must a legal notice contain?

The mandatory details depend on the company's legal form. In principle, the legal notice must include the name or company name, an address at which legal documents can be served, the authorised representatives and, where applicable, the commercial register entry and the VAT identification number. For a GmbH, this includes, for example, the commercial register entry with the registry court and the names of the managing directors; for a sole proprietorship, the owner's address. An email address for electronic contact must also be given, so that users and authorities can reach the company directly. Anyone practising a regulated profession, such as tax adviser or architect, must additionally name the competent chamber or supervisory authority. If any of these details is missing, the legal notice is considered incomplete; legally, it makes no difference whether a single detail is missing or the entire legal notice.

How must the legal notice be accessible?

The legal notice must be easy to find from every page of the website and reachable within a maximum of two clicks. A clearly labelled link is enough: according to case law, the link texts "Impressum" (legal notice) or "Kontakt" (contact) are customary and recognised. The label "Rechtliches" (legal matters) alone, by contrast, is often not sufficient, because it does not clearly point users to the provider identification and may be judged inadequate in a dispute. The link should be permanently visible in the header or footer, so that it can be found on every subpage without a long search. Hidden placements, for example deeply nested in a submenu, generally do not meet the requirement of easy recognisability.

What do you need to do in practice?

To keep your legal notice complete and legally safe, it is best to proceed in these steps:

1. Compile the mandatory details according to your legal form (name/company name, address, representation, register, VAT ID number).
2. Provide an email address for electronic contact.
3. For regulated professions: add the competent chamber or supervisory authority.
4. Make the legal notice reachable from every page via a clearly labelled link within a maximum of two clicks.
5. Update the details immediately when your address, name or legal form changes.

What are the risks of an incorrect or missing legal notice?

Missing or incomplete legal notice details are among the most common grounds for cease-and-desist letters in competition law. Competitors or competition associations can send a cease-and-desist letter that carries costs, and fines of up to €50,000 are also possible. Even an outdated reference to the EU online dispute resolution platform (ODR) can trigger a cease-and-desist letter: the platform was shut down on 20.07.2025, so a link that remains leads nowhere and counts as an error that can be warned against. Anyone who does not remove the ODR link therefore risks a cease-and-desist letter over an element that was originally mandatory and now has exactly the opposite effect. Both risks, incomplete mandatory details and a dead ODR link, can be avoided with comparatively little effort, but in the worst case they cause unnecessary costs and work for lawyers' letters and corrections.

Frequently asked questions

Is a link with the text "Rechtliches" enough for the legal notice?

According to case law, often not. Users must be able to see at first glance that the provider identification is behind it; link texts such as "Impressum" or "Kontakt" meet this requirement more reliably and are regarded as the legally safer standard.

Does the link to the EU online dispute resolution platform (ODR) still have to appear in the legal notice?

No. The platform was shut down on 20.07.2025. An ODR link that remains leads nowhere and should be removed, because a dead link can be the subject of a cease-and-desist letter.

Which additional details are required for a GmbH?

Besides the general mandatory details, the legal notice of a GmbH must include the commercial register entry with the registry court and the names of the managing directors as authorised representatives.

What happens if the company's address changes?

The details in the legal notice must be updated immediately. An outdated legal notice is legally considered incomplete and can be the subject of a cease-and-desist letter just like one that is missing entirely.

Does the legal notice requirement also apply to small sole proprietorships?

Yes. The requirement under § 5 DDG does not depend on company size but on the business character of the online offering. Freelancers and small business owners (Kleinunternehmer) must also maintain a complete legal notice.

Source: § 5 DDG. This article is general information and does not replace legal advice in individual cases. As of: July 2026.