injunction
noun · einstweilige Verfügung
Einstweilige Verfügung for the interim order, §§ 935, 940 ZPO, Unterlassungsanspruch and Unterlassungsurteil where the injunction is final. German splits the remedy into a substantive claim and a fast procedure, and the machine’s habit of making everything einstweilig turns permanent orders provisional.
Which translation, when
Why
An injunction is one English remedy with two lives, interim and final, discretionary both times. German law never merged them. The fast life is procedure, the einstweilige Verfügung of §§ 935, 940 ZPO, available on urgency, provisional by definition, undone if the main case goes the other way, and with strict liability for the opponent’s damage built in when the order proves unjustified, § 945 ZPO. The slow life is substance, the Unterlassungsanspruch, § 1004 BGB carried by analogy across private law, § 8 UWG for competition cases, tried like any claim and ending in an Unterlassungsurteil that § 890 ZPO enforces with Ordnungsgeld. So the translation must first ask which life the English order is living. A permanent injunction rendered as einstweilige Verfügung has been demoted to the provisional, a contradiction a German lawyer reads as nonsense, and injunctive relief in a contract, the parties acknowledging that damages would not suffice, points at the substantive claim and the fast track together, which German drafting says in two words, not one.
Typical mistakes
- Dauerhafte einstweilige Verfügung is a contradiction in terms, einstweilig means provisional, the final order is an Unterlassungsurteil on an Unterlassungsanspruch.
- Injunktion exists in comparative writing, the ZPO does not know the word, and the courtroom words are Verfügung, Anspruch and Urteil, the loanword parks the problem instead of solving it.
- The German interim track has house rules the English reader should expect, urgency must be shown and self-inflicted delay destroys it, so an injunction strategy that waited months in London arrives in Germany without its Verfügungsgrund.
What matters
Cease-and-desist scenarios show the fork: an infringer must stop now, that is the einstweilige Verfügung, §§ 935, 940 ZPO, urgency shown, order provisional. The promise in a settlement that the conduct will stop for good lives in the Unterlassungsanspruch world, breach met with Ordnungsgeld, § 890 ZPO. One English word, two German tracks, and the choice tells the reader whether the fight is this month or on the merits.
What the machine misses
Injunction collapses in machine output into einstweilige Verfügung whatever its life span, and permanent injunction arrives as dauerhafte einstweilige Verfügung, a provisional order promised forever, German nonsense in four words. The split the German system insists on, fast procedure here, substantive claim there, is precisely the decision statistical output cannot see, and the reader gets an urgent remedy where the source awarded a final one.
Examples
| to seek an injunction | eine einstweilige Verfügung beantragen |
| a permanent injunction | ein Unterlassungsurteil |
| injunctive relief | Unterlassungsansprüche und einstweiliger Rechtsschutz |
| a cease and desist letter | eine Abmahnung |
More notes on these sections
nuisance Immission
defamation üble Nachrede