Automated Private Enforcement: Evidence from the Google Fonts Case
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Date
2025-03
Publication Type
Working Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
Plaintiffs often have little incentive to detect and enforce small claims, which reduces defendants’ incentives to comply. With advances in artificial intelligence, can automated private enforcement increase compliance? The Google Fonts Case offers a unique opportunity to explore this question. After a German court ruled that the dynamic embedding of Google Fonts violated the GDPR, an entrepreneurial lawyer in Austria used automated tools to detect violations and threaten website operators with lawsuits. Drawing on a comprehensive sample of 1,517,429 websites across 32 European countries over a two-year period, we use a difference-in-difference approach to show a significant compliance effect in Austria. Within three months, non-compliance dropped by 22.7 percentage points, a nearly 50% reduction. These findings suggest that automated private enforcement can be highly disruptive, pressuring policymakers to recalibrate legal rules.
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published
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Journal / series
Volume
04/2025
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
ETH Zurich, Center for Law & Economics
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Edition / version
Methods
Software
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Date created
Subject
litigation; private enforcement; automated enforcement; small claims; GDPR; artificial intelligence (AI); difference-in-difference; SME compliance
Organisational unit
09629 - Stremitzer, Alexander / Stremitzer, Alexander