The legal notice is the page nobody enjoys writing and the one that gets checked first — by competitors, by trade associations and occasionally by an annoyed client who wants to know whom to address. For a landscaping business this is not a theoretical matter: the website is where enquiries begin, and at the same time it is a commercial offering in the eyes of the law. Whatever is missing there is open to attack. The good news is that the requirements are manageable. Section 5 of the German Digital Services Act lists the mandatory details, and most of them already appear on your letterhead. The mistakes that actually trigger warning letters are almost never exotic — they are outdated details, a missing legal form suffix and a link nobody can find on a phone. This article works through the mandatory details, separates sole traders from limited companies, shows where the notice has to sit and names the points where trade businesses regularly slip. It does not replace legal advice, but it makes the conversation with your adviser shorter.
Key takeaways
- Section 5 DDG requires a name, a physical address where documents can be served, an email address and a second fast channel of contact — the duty applies to every commercial website, including a plain calling card without a shop.
- Sole traders state first and last names in full; a limited company additionally needs the legal form suffix, the registered office, every managing director with their full name, plus the register court and the register number.
- The link must be reachable from every page in no more than two clicks, be delivered as selectable text and exist in an English language version too — a notice only on the home page is not enough.
- Businesses with more than ten employees on 31 December of the previous year must state under Section 36 VSBG whether they take part in consumer dispute resolution; the former link to the European dispute platform belongs out of the text.
- The most frequent grounds for a warning letter are not complicated but simply out of date: a departed managing director, an old address, a missing legal form suffix — an annual review in winter costs around half an hour (project experience).
Why the Duty Also Applies to Small Businesses
The rule sits in Section 5 of the German Digital Services Act (DDG), which replaced the former Telemedia Act in May 2024. For trade businesses little has changed in substance: anyone offering a digital service commercially must keep certain details easy to recognise, directly reachable and permanently available. What moved were mainly the references. Where the heading used to read as a reference to the old Telemedia Act, it should now point to the DDG. If your site has not been touched for a few years, the old wording is probably still there — on its own that is no serious breach, but it is the first sign that nobody has reviewed the page in a long time.
Commercial means not purely private and set up to last. That covers virtually every business website, including a four-page calling card with no form, no shop and no blog. There is no minor-case exemption for small businesses and no exception for sites that show nothing but a phone number and three photos. The same duty applies beyond your own domain: to business profiles in map services, in trade and review directories and in career portals. Most of these platforms have a dedicated field for it or accept a link to the legal notice on your website. If you maintain those profiles for local visibility anyway, this point is handled in the same pass.
In practice, missing details lead down two routes. The first is a competition-law warning letter from a competitor or an association, combined with a cease-and-desist declaration and the legal costs, which the recipient bears. The second is an administrative offence: breaches of the information duty can be fined up to 50,000 euros (DDG). The warning letter is by far the more common route, and its real nuisance lies less in the amount than in the cease-and-desist declaration, which carries a contractual penalty for any repetition. This article describes the rules but does not replace legal advice; unusual constellations belong in a case-by-case review.
The Mandatory Details Under Section 5 DDG
First come name and address. A servable address means that a court document can be delivered: street and house number, postcode and town. A PO box is not enough, and neither is the tax adviser's address as a c/o entry. If the registered business address is your home address — not unusual for smaller landscaping firms — then that is the address to state. There is no way around it, not even with the argument that the yard is somewhere else. You may of course name the operating site in addition, but the servable address has to be identifiable.
Second, the details that allow rapid electronic contact. The email address is mandatory, and it has to be a real address rather than a graphic or a mere link to a form. Alongside it the law requires a further channel enabling direct communication. In the trades that is simply the phone number, and it belongs on every page anyway: a substantial share of landscaping enquiries arrives by phone, and a caller who cannot find the number calls the next firm instead. Relying on a contact form alone as the second channel is the riskier option — whether it satisfies the requirement of direct communication is disputed.
Third, the details that depend on legal form and activity: the register court and register number where the business is registered; the VAT identification number under Section 27a UStG or a business identification number, if one exists; the competent supervisory authority where the activity requires authorisation; and the chamber, statutory professional title and professional rules for regulated professions. Which chamber your business belongs to depends on how it is classified — the notice from the chamber in your files answers that faster than any research. Where no authorisation is required, the details on a supervisory authority simply do not apply.
Name and address
Full personal name or the company name with its legal form suffix, plus street, house number, postcode and town. PO boxes and c/o addresses do not meet the requirement.
Two contact channels
An email address as a mandatory item and a further channel for direct communication. In the trades that is the phone number, which should be visible anyway.
Authorised representatives
For legal entities, all managing directors or board members with first and last names. An initial or the surname alone does not satisfy the rule.
Register entry
Register court and number where the business is entered in the commercial, cooperative, partnership or company register. Otherwise the item does not apply.
Tax identifiers
The VAT identification number or a business identification number, if one exists. The ordinary tax number used with the tax office does not belong there.
Supervision and chamber
Only for activities requiring authorisation or for regulated professions. For many landscaping firms this point drops out entirely.
Sole Trader, Partnership, Limited Company: The Differences
For a sole trader the entry is the simplest and is still the one most often got wrong. What is required are first and last name, written out. An abbreviated first name is not enough, and the trading name alone does not replace the personal name. You may of course present yourself under a name such as garden and landscape construction — but the legal notice has to make clear which natural person stands behind it. Equally, no legal form suffix may be used that does not exist: anyone not entered in the commercial register is not a registered merchant and does not put the corresponding suffix after their name.
The civil-law partnership is the classic form among family landscaping firms — two brothers, father and daughter, two master craftsmen from the same training year. Here all partners belong in the legal notice with first and last names, not only the one who writes the quotations. Since the reform of German partnership law such a partnership can also enter itself in the company register and then carries a corresponding suffix; in that case the register court and register number are added. Without registration those items drop out, but the names of all partners remain mandatory.
With a limited company things become more formal. Required are the company name with its full legal form suffix, the registered office, every managing director with first and last name, plus the register court and the commercial register number. Where the entrepreneurial company with limited liability is used, the limitation suffix is written out rather than abbreviated. If the company is in liquidation, that has to be stated. And if you voluntarily give figures on the company's capital, those figures must be complete — share capital and, where contributions are outstanding, their total amount. Anyone who gives no capital figures has nothing to add.
| Legal form | What is mandatory | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Sole trader | First and last name in full, address, contact channels | Only the trading name given, first name abbreviated |
| Registered merchant | Company name with suffix, personal name, court and number | Register details missing although the suffix is used |
| Civil-law partnership | All partners with first and last names, shared address | Only one partner named, the others left out |
| Registered partnership | Additionally the company register and the register number | Suffix used, register details never added |
| Limited company | Name, registered office, all directors, court and number | A departed managing director is still in the text |
| Entrepreneurial company | As above, with the limitation suffix written out in full | Suffix abbreviated or omitted altogether |
Where the Notice Has to Sit and How It Is Reached
The law names three properties: easy to recognise, directly reachable and permanently available. Easy to recognise means the route is found without searching — which is why the German label Impressum has become established and why it is the safe choice. Directly reachable means a short route; as a rule of thumb the page must open from anywhere in no more than two clicks. Permanently available means the link is present on every page and not only on the home page. The footer satisfies all three requirements at once, which is exactly why the link lives there.
Every page really does mean every one: service pages, location pages, the portfolio gallery, blog articles, job ads and the landing page you built for an advertising campaign. Campaign pages in particular tend to fail here, because they are deliberately built without navigation so that visitors do not wander off. A text link in the footer does not undermine that intention. The same applies to language versions: if your site has an English version, it needs a working route as well — the notice itself need not be translated, but the path to it must not lead nowhere.
The technical pitfalls are few but stubborn. A legal notice supplied as an image file or a PDF is not readable as text and is therefore vulnerable. A page that only opens through a script or a pop-up window is not reliably available. And most mistakes happen on the phone: the link sits in a menu that takes two taps to unfold, or it is covered by a consent banner that cannot be dismissed without making a choice. So always test the route on a phone as well — most of your visitors are there, and for a landscaping website that holds even more strongly than in other sectors.
- A footer link on every page, labelled with the established wording
- No more than two clicks from anywhere, campaign and blog pages included
- Delivered as selectable text, not as an image and not as a PDF
- Tappable on a phone without zooming and not covered by the consent banner
- Reachable in every language version, even if the text exists only in German
- Stored or linked in directory, career and map profiles as well
Blog, Dispute Resolution and Tax Identifiers
Anyone regularly publishing editorial content — an advice section, seasonal articles, technical pieces on sub-base construction or tree pruning — should also keep Section 18 of the German Interstate Media Treaty in view. For journalistic and editorial offerings it requires a responsible person to be named with their name and address. Whether a company blog falls under it depends on scope and regularity and has to be judged case by case. In practice the addition is harmless: one line with the name and address of the responsible person, as a rule the owner. Whoever adds it has the question off the table.
The second additional item concerns consumer dispute resolution. Under Section 36 VSBG, companies that employed more than ten (VSBG) people on 31 December of the previous year and operate a website must state there, in an easily accessible manner, whether they are willing or obliged to take part in proceedings before a consumer arbitration board. Many landscaping firms sit right around that threshold, and it can shift with every hire. The statement is short and may express either willingness or its absence — it only has to be present and unambiguous. Anyone under an obligation additionally names the competent body with its address and web address.
A third point has ceased to apply and is still being carried along: the reference to the European platform for online dispute resolution. That platform was shut down on 20 July 2025 (European Commission). The text block and its link still sit on countless trade websites and now lead nowhere. A dead mandatory reference is no cause for panic, but it is a visible sign of a neglected legal section and belongs out of the text at the next review. The ordinary tax number is a similar case: it is not a mandatory item under Section 5 DDG, belongs to your dealings with the tax office and need not be published. Mandatory is only the VAT identification number or the business identification number, where one exists.
Old text blocks are the most common legacy find
Common Grounds for a Warning Letter
The cases that actually lead to a letter from a lawyer are remarkably uniform. In first place comes the missing or incorrect legal form. A business has been trading as a limited company for two years, but the notice still names only the owner; or the other way round, a suffix appears in the text that was never registered. Both are easy to spot and effortless for a competitor to verify. Close behind come missing authorised representatives: a company with two managing directors of whom only one is named does not meet the requirement.
The second large block is outdated information. The business has moved and the address on the website is still the old one. A managing director has left but is still listed. The landline was switched off, the email address belongs to a provider change from the year before last. This is not bad faith but the typical result of nobody being responsible for the legal section. Which is exactly why responsibility is the most effective lever — one named person, one appointment a year, done.
The third block concerns accessibility. The link exists only on the home page, it is embedded as a graphic without text, it sits in a fold-out menu two levels deep on a phone, or the details are hidden on a contact page below the form instead of living on a page of their own. A fourth case, rarer but unpleasant, is the copied legal notice: whoever takes over another website's text and merely swaps the names regularly takes over statements that are wrong for their own business — and depending on how the text is written, copying it may touch third-party rights as well.
- The legal form is missing, outdated, or used without a matching registration
- Not all managing directors or partners are named with their full names
- Address, phone number or email address are out of date after a relocation
- The link exists only on the home page or cannot be found on a phone
- The details are supplied as an image or PDF instead of readable text
- The reference to the closed European dispute platform is still in the text
- The consumer dispute statement is missing although the employee threshold is exceeded
Hardly any warning letter in the trades hits a complicated legal question. It hits a text that nobody has read for four years.
Keeping the Legal Notice Up to Date
A legal notice is not a document you write once but one that travels with the business. The occasions for a change are limited and can be listed in advance: relocation or a new operating site, a change or addition in management, a partner joining or leaving, a change of legal form, entry in the commercial register, a new phone number or email address, the issuing of a VAT identification number, and crossing the employee threshold for the consumer dispute statement. Pin that list where such changes are handled anyway — usually in bookkeeping — and the review is as automated as it needs to be.
The second building block is a fixed appointment. In landscaping the winter half-year suggests itself, because that is when the work sits that the season pushes aside: documenting projects, sorting images, reworking text. Reviewing the legal section fits into the same afternoon and takes around half an hour (project experience) when nothing fundamental has changed. That appointment covers more than your own site: the details in directories, review portals and career platforms should carry the same state, because divergent entries are unhelpful both legally and for being found.
The third building block is responsibility. As long as nobody is named, nobody does it. In smaller firms that is the owner; in larger ones the person who also maintains the quotation templates and the letterhead — because the same details appear there and they should agree. Where the site is maintained continuously anyway, the legal section belongs in the same rhythm. Among the businesses we work with is Viktor Waldbauer Garten- und Landschaftsbau from Nordstemmen, with work ranging from sand slabs and terraces to cisterns and complete garden installations; there too, reconciling the details is simply a recurring item in looking after the site.
Take stock
Open your legal notice and lay the register extract, the trade registration and the VAT documents beside it. Every item is checked against a document, not against memory.
Reconcile form and representation
Do the company name, legal form suffix, registered office and the names of all representatives match the register? People who have left come out, new ones go in.
Test the contact channels
Dial the number, write to the email address, wait for the reply. An address that lands in an abandoned mailbox is as good as no address at all.
Check the additional items
Employee count on the reference date, the consumer dispute statement, the person responsible for editorial content, and old text blocks that no longer apply.
Verify accessibility
On a phone and on a desktop, click through to the notice from a subpage and from a campaign page. Include the consent banner in that test.
Follow up off-site
Bring directories, the map service, review portals and job portals to the same state, and enter the date for the next review straight away.
Keep Legal Notice, Privacy Policy and Form Apart
The legal notice and the privacy policy are two different things and belong on two different pages. The notice answers who stands behind the offering. The privacy policy answers which data are processed when someone visits the site, on what legal basis, for how long and with what rights for the people concerned. Merging both into one text is common and unfortunate, because the mandatory details then disappear into a long block of prose. Both pages need their own footer link, and both should be reachable from every language version.
There are points of contact nonetheless, above all at the contact form. Personal data are collected there, a short notice on the processing with a link to the privacy policy is needed there, and the number of required fields decides there whether a prospect sends the enquiry or abandons it. Economy is both data protection and good craft: collecting only what you need to assess the project leaves less to justify and produces more enquiries. How that combines with an enquiry form that also pre-qualifies is a separate question — the legal requirements certainly do not stand in the way of a well-built form.
Impressum
Information pursuant to Section 5 DDG
[Company name with legal form suffix]
[Street and house number]
[Postcode and town]
Represented by the managing directors:
[First name Last name]
[First name Last name]
Phone: [number]
Email: [address@your-domain.de]
Register court: Local court of [town]
Register number: HRB [number]
VAT identification number under Section 27a UStG:
[DE000000000]
Consumer dispute resolution under Section 36 VSBG:
[willing / not willing] to take part in proceedings
before a consumer arbitration board
Responsible for editorial content under Section 18 MStV:
[First name Last name, address]A template is the starting point, not the result