I received a mail from our legal department. I’m sure similar ones are winging their way around German companies.
With the implementation of the Electronic Commercial Register, Cooperative Society Register and Company Register Act (Gesetz über elektronische Handelsregister und Genossenschaftsregister sowie das Unternehmensregister), or EHUG, which took effect January 1, 2007, in Germany, new regulations apply to the contents of business-related e-mails.
Effective immediately, all e-mails with business content must include a supplementary text that contains the following details: legal form of the company, location of the company, applicable register court, commercial register number, and for joint-stock companies the names of all members of the Executive Board and the chairperson of the Supervisory Board.
Any infringement to this new disclosure requirement will result in fines and may also lead to additional costs incurred from written warnings. The new regulation concerns the words and meaning of all external e-mail communications with business content. It not only applies to e-mails with obvious legal content, such as offers, orders, or notices of termination, but also to any business e-mail sent outside the company. This also applies to Blackberry mails.
This means that the footer on my email is 1099 characters long.
I wonder if there will be a new government jobtitle? Elektronischeunterzeichnungkontrollebeaftrager
Changing your signature on Outlook is a mission. (tools, customise, mailformat, signature, edit….) also it isn’t server based, so I think you need to do it on every PC you use.
I understand that this isn’t just an odd German rule, it is also an EU Directive.
UPDATE; Dear German government please accept my apologies for singling you out, the UK has also implemented a similar law. See Naked law for details
Technorati tags: Germany, Bureaucracy
Vendorprisey 
“Changing your signature on Outlook is a mission. (tools, customise, mailformat, signature, edit….) also it isn’t server based, so I think you need to do it on every PC you use.”
Try using Plaxo, it syncs your Signature among other things (Contacts, Calendar, etc.)
Thanks Eran. I’ll check it out.
Check
http://www.internetrecht-rostock.de/email-pflichtangaben.htm
“Die Angaben können entfallen bei Mitteilungen im Rahmen einer bestehenden Geschäftsbeziehung.”
Drat, you beat me to blogging that 😉
I alerted corporate security to this last week (they might have known already), so I saw that coming. Can’t see that helping any customer – all it’s good for is to generate silly lawyers notices to companies that don’t implement fast enough.
I wonder where the liability ends – german colleagues sending email from the US, or US colleagues sending emails out of Walldorf without the correct footer – CRAZY!
Read this for more fun:
http://www.savory.de/blog_jan_07.htm#20070126
What a drag!!!!
S
This new law will affect allot of people that are running Exchange 2000 using OWA as you can’t add a signatures. Messageware offers a product call PlusPack that allows you to add Signatures to OWA on Exchange 2000 which is server side and very cost effective.
http://www.messageware.com/product_pluspack.htm
feel free to email
For those of you using Lotus Notes and Domino, Crossware Mail Signature will allow you to push out a standard signature and disable existing ones without going to each desktop. Visit the crossware website for a free trial.
Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.