Shortly before the start of the Stuttgart Spring Festival, Apel Königs-Alm GmbH attempted to prevent the Königsalm on the Wasen with a temporary injunction due to alleged trademark infringement. The application before the Regional Court of Stuttgart was successfully defended by our representation.

The Renoldi family, which we represent, runs the Königsalm at the Wasen in Stuttgart. The Königsalm is a mobile festival hut in the form of a wooden alpine pasture that can accommodate up to 2,000 people. It has existed since 2018 and had its premiere in 2019 at the Freimarkt in Bremen.

The Renoldis received a cease and desist letter from Apel Königs-Alm GmbH back in 2019 because of the name “Königsalm”. According to the company, it operates a restaurant in Nieste near Kassel. At the time, it owned two German word/figurative marks with the word element Königsalm. The cease and desist letter was rejected by a lawyer in Bremen. Nothing more happened after that, so our clients assumed that the matter had been settled.

However, a few days before the start of the Stuttgart Spring Festival, Apel Königs-Alm GmbH attempted to obtain a temporary injunction from the Stuttgart Regional Court to prohibit the use of the name Königsalm. The application was based on the Königsalm word mark, which was registered after the first cease and desist letter in 2019. No cease and desist letter was issued prior to the application to the court and the application did not even mention that a cease and desist letter had already been issued in 2019.

However, the court did not issue the interim injunction without an oral hearing as requested, but instead set a date for an oral hearing.

Due to the previous history, we objected to a lack of urgency and abuse of rights.

Court decision on the Königsalm at the Cannstatter Wasen

The LG Stuttgart (Judgment of 19.04.2023 – Ref. 35 O 43/23 KfH ) dismissed the application for a temporary injunction filed by the opposing party with harsh words.

There was no urgency for the issuance of an interim injunction. The applicant had not pursued its claims in 2019 and thus indicated that it was not in a hurry. The fact that the operating company of the Königsalm in Bremen was different in 2019, although the shareholders and representatives were the same, did not change this in the opinion of the court. There was only one mobile festival hut “Königsalm” and no action was taken against it at the time. It was irrelevant who operated it at the respective folk festival in each individual case.

Application abusive of rights

The court also judged the application to be an abuse of rights. According to the court, the applicant had attempted to obtain the interim injunction through a gross infringement of her procedural
duty to tell the truth.

1) Apel Königs-Alm GmbH did not issue a cease and desist letter for no apparent reason before applying for a preliminary injunction, although this was necessary and possible.

2. the opposing party further requested that the preliminary injunction be issued without hearing the defendant and, if this was refused, requested that it be notified by telephone. According to the court, this clearly shows – taking into account the fact that no cease and desist letter was issued – that the applicant was deliberately seeking to take the defendants by surprise and obtain an immediately enforceable title without the defendants even being aware of the proceedings beforehand.

This would have given it the opportunity to put the defendants under considerable pressure shortly before the start of the spring festival, as they would in fact have had no way of avoiding the use of the commercial designation without completely shutting down the festival.

3. the applicant also concealed its knowledge of the use of the “Königsalm” sign for the defendant’s festival hut in 2019 and the cease and desist letter addressed to the operating company at the time and its response, in violation of procedural law.

Rather, the application was to be understood as meaning that the Königsalm was to be operated for the first time at the 2023 Spring Festival, which was obviously untrue and only served to obtain a temporary injunction without a hearing.

The applicant had already known since at least October 2019 that the “Königsalm” sign was being used for this one mobile festival hut. She also knew that the responsible natural person behind it was one of the defendants in their capacity as managing director of the operating company at the time.

Conclusion

If you are accused by a court of trying to obtain a temporary injunction by abusing the law, this is a resounding slap in the face for the applicant.

In our view, the procedure judged by the court to be abusive was only aimed at building up the greatest possible pressure with a court decision in summary proceedings in order to use this as leverage for monetary claims.

We are pleased that we were able to successfully fend off the attempt for our client and that she can now welcome guests to the Stuttgart Spring Festival with the Königsalm. It remains to be seen what will happen to the Königsalm name afterwards.