Deutsche Bahn has to pay its competitor Flixtrain damages for violations of competition law. The Hamburg regional court condemned the company for discriminating against Flixtrain connections in the app.
Because of misleading filter options in a previous travel information in which Flixtrain trains were not displayed, Deutsche Bahn has to pay damages to the competitor in an amount that is still unclear. The Hamburg Regional Court published the judgment from December 1st today. Flixtrain had previously sued.
A connection search design used in 2018 with the preset filter option “Prefer fast connection” was affected. The court decided that this meant that certain Flixtrain connections were not displayed, even though they were viewed as “fast connections” from the customer’s perspective and were therefore expected as a search result. Competition was hindered in relation to the Flixtrain offers on the Berlin-Stuttgart and Hamburg-Cologne routes.
The amount of the payments still has to be determined
According to the judgment, Deutsche Bahn is obliged to pay compensation. In order to quantify this, according to the district court, you must provide information about booking requests in the affected period. The judgment is not final. A court spokesman said the losing party could appeal the verdict, which the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court would have to decide on.
“The matter complained of is historical and has no relevance to our current travel information,” said a DB spokeswoman. In the proceedings, a design of bahn.de and the DB Navigator app was criticized, which has no longer been used since spring 2019. “We are now examining the judgment and the reasons for the judgment and will then decide whether we will appeal.”