GermanyInhaltskontrolle Allgemeiner Geschäftsbedingungen (Content Control of Standard Terms)
Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), § 307
In force.
A contract terms of service (ToS) rule binding private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Contract terms
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Treat a provision in standard terms as ineffective where it unreasonably disadvantages the other party to the user of the terms contrary to the requirements of good faith, including where the provision is not clear and understandable (§ 307 Abs. 1).
- In case of doubt, treat a provision as unreasonably disadvantaging where it cannot be reconciled with essential principles of the statutory rule it departs from, or limits essential rights or duties arising from the nature of the contract so far that attaining the contract's purpose is endangered (§ 307 Abs. 2).
- Expect the content control to reach only provisions that depart from legal provisions or supplement them, while other provisions can still be ineffective for lack of clarity (§ 307 Abs. 3).
- Do not treat contract conditions that the parties negotiated individually as standard terms (§ 305 Abs. 1 Satz 3).
- Where a provision is ineffective or did not become part of the contract, treat the rest of the contract as in force and its content as following the statutory provisions (§ 306 Abs. 1 and 2).
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 307 sets a content control for standard terms. It imposes no duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
A provision in standard terms is ineffective where it unreasonably disadvantages the other party to the user of the terms contrary to the requirements of good faith, and an unreasonable disadvantage can also arise from the provision not being clear and understandable.
In case of doubt an unreasonable disadvantage is presumed where a provision cannot be reconciled with essential principles of the statutory rule it departs from, or limits essential rights or duties arising from the nature of the contract so far that attaining the contract's purpose is endangered. The content control applies only to provisions that depart from legal provisions or supplement them, although other provisions can still be ineffective for lack of clarity.
Standard terms are all contract conditions pre-formulated for a multitude of contracts that one party, the user, presents to the other party when the contract is concluded. Contract conditions are not standard terms to the extent that the parties negotiated them individually. Toward a business, a legal person under public law or a special fund under public law, section 305 paragraphs 2 and 3, section 308 numbers 1 and 2 to 9 and section 309 do not apply to standard terms.
Where a provision is ineffective or did not become part of the contract, the rest of the contract stays in force and its content follows the statutory provisions. The official consolidated text of section 307 prints no day on which it took effect.
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