Today, the Regional Court of Stuttgart issued a judgment against us in the trademark dispute brought forward against us by the city of Ulm. Unfortunately, the court ruled in favor of the city on all points 😔

We have not yet been able to review the detailed judgment with our lawyer, so we do not yet know how the legal dispute will continue over the next few days.

Overall, however, we believe that the ruling sends a very clear and problematic signal to digital volunteering in Germany. In most cases, communities like ours are interested in clever technical solutions and objectives, and therefore work quickly on different projects instead of directly establishing legal structures (such as an e.V.). The “Stadtlabor” project in Ulm was originally intended for this type of involvement. How should a community like ours behave in the future in order to avoid the risk of its voluntary services being appropriated by (financially or politically) more powerful sponsors?

There will certainly be more opportunities to ask and answer these and similar questions in discussions over the next few days. At the moment, we are a bit exhausted from the day, and if you need to read more, we can only refer you to our Twitter thread on the topic, as well as first articles on the more detailed reasons for the judgment.

In the short or long term—and depending on what comes out of the consultation with our lawyer—we may have to give up our name and, for example, shut down or rename this website, our social media accounts and our association.

Only one thing is certain so far: as a community, we will continue to work together on digitalization issues and promote and demand the self-determined development of our civil society. Last but not least, your great support so far encourages us to continue in this direction, and we will of course continue to accept donations via our donation form as long as it is still possible here 😊

More updates will follow, hopefully very soon!