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Apparently, a few years ago, some Linux developer named McHardy started enforcing the GPL in Germany on his own. See e.g. the background article at https://sfconservancy.org/blog...

It looks like he tends to sue GPL-violators for about 2000€ + his costs (attorny fees for trying to settle out of court, costs for reverse engineering):

Example where he successfully sued the Germany subsidy of a Taiwanese hardware manufacturer for a total of about 2900€: LG Frankfurt, 2-6 O 224/06 http://www.jbb.de/fileadmin/do...

However, there was also a case where he demanded and got more: A GPL-violator that he had contacted in 2010, and got to comply with the GPL out of court back then became a repeat offender in 2012. He sued them for for 5000€ + attorny fees of 2000€: LG Hamburg, 308 O 10/13 http://www.damm-it-recht.de/lg...

On the other hand, most Linux developers apparently think that free software developers and organizations tasked with GPL enforcement should not profit from suing GPL violators. The Software Freedom Conservancy is losing money from enforcing the GPL, and asks for donations to be able to continue their work.

Philipp

AFAIK, the GPL has never lost in court. Every case I'm aware of has settled (because the violator realized they could not win); oh here's one that went to court: http://www.jbb.de/judgment_dc_frankfurt_gpl.pdf

http://www.open-mag.com/features/Vol_66/GNU/GNU.htm
"We handled approximately 50 violations last year. We expect to handle about 5-10% more this year. With staffing levels, this is basically what we can handle. There are many more out there that we could pursue. ... I would estimate that 90% or more of violations are simply confusions that can be cleared up by friendly negotiation and explanation. We start every case assuming that it is simply a confusion to be cleared up.

Of the other 10%, almost all are disregard, which requires careful diplomacy to move violators to a point where they take their obligations seriously. So far, we've been able to do it. A very small number of violations are actual willful, concealed infringements. These tend to be the "big cases" that take a long time to resolve.

Because we've been careful not to publicly admonish GPL violators, many people don't realize how often we have enforced the GPL successfully. ...

We have the right to sue for copyright infringement if we need to. We rarely need to threaten a lawsuit, and we've never had to file one. Most companies realize that what we ask for is not onerous and is easily done. Most companies that find copyright infringement sue for huge sums of money; the most money we ever ask for is reimbursement of our cost in doing that enforcement effort."

http://gpl-violations.org/news/20041004-majorupdate.html
"The netfilter/iptables project did not announce every individual case, but has so far settled in more than 10 cases out of court. Among the vendors are major companies such as Siemens, Fujitsu-Siemens, Asus and Belkin."

Umm.. no. The GPL has not been tested in court. At least, not in the way you are implying

This single court decision is binding (when not calling for appeal) and D-Link in between acknowledged that they won't challenge the decision.

It's important to note that you can't quote a precedent in Germany, as the german law doesn't take care of previous cases.
E.g. a court in munich decided back in 2004, that the GPL does apply (back then: for netfilter/iptables) and can be enforced (in that case, against Sitecom, another router vendor).

You can present that there have been a dozen decisions in one direction, but usually that doesn't have any impact on the court's decision. So this single court decision can't be regarded as a test case, but it still improves the situation for defending the GPL a little bit - as a reference, but not as a precedent. In fact, there are quite often cases where different highest regional courts do state completely opposite decisions for very much comparable, but arguable cases.
For example, german websites have to show an imprint, stating a few legal things along with contact information (full name, postal address, usually phone number and email address). OLG Hamm decided that you don't have to state your phone number, an email adress with an often checked account ist satisfying, while OLG Cologne previously stated a very different view in a much noted court decision.

This recent D-Link case is still somehow cumbersome:

D-Link tried to rely on section 2 of the GPL, which might be unenforcable under german law or in some interpretation violate german or even european law. As the GPL doesn't contain a severability clause (it doesn't render a whole document invalid just because a part of it is regarded as invalid), this might've taken down the whole GPL (this needs to be considered for new versions of the GPL!). D-Link argued that without a valid license, this open source software would've been completely free from any rights or licenses.

The court revoked that idea, because setting some code under GPL still doesn't remove your copyright on that code; so D-Link could've been challenged for copyright infringement and all parties settled for section 4 of the GPL, completely ignoring anything out of that scope.

The court's decision (of course in german) can be found at http://www.jbb.de/urteil_lg_frankfurt_gpl.pdf (scanned fax pages).
The name "D-Link" has been striked out, due to some other law thingie (jbb.de are the lawyers for gpl-violations.org any may not offend privacy rights of the other party), but the rest is still complete.

I think I've found the court order. There is a translation into English for the German-impaired.

The German Netfilter vs Sitecom case was not settled out of court. The preliminary injunction, which forced Sitecom to stop distribution of their access points, was upheld in May 2004. The verdict is available in writing since July 2004. I'm not sure whether Sitecom appealed.