Google Fonts: Szpunar opposes damages for provoked GDPR breaches

According to Jose Manuel Pérez Marzabal’s article “Google Fonts claims should not earn GDPR damages, says AG”, published by Digital Watch Observatory, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar advised the Court of Justice of the EU on 5 November 2026 to exclude compensation for non-material damage where someone knowingly, automatically and repeatedly provokes GDPR infringements to obtain compensation. The Opinion concerns Case C-654/25, Undelam, and does not bind the Court. Its contents have not been independently checked against the primary document.

According to Digital Watch Observatory, the dispute concerns dynamically loaded Google Fonts, which send a visitor’s IP address to Google’s servers in the United States. In the proceedings referred by Germany’s Federal Court of Justice, an individual reportedly used a crawler to locate websites with this configuration and visited them to trigger the transfer. His lawyer then allegedly sent infringement letters to more than 100,000 website operators. One operator reportedly paid EUR 170 and subsequently sought its recovery: this was a payment described in the dispute, rather than a court award.

The interpretation of Article 82 GDPR attributed to Szpunar separates an infringement from compensable damage: the provision would compensate harm suffered without rewarding the deliberate creation of conditions for a claim. This position would neither establish that transfers associated with Google Fonts are lawful nor generally exempt website operators from GDPR liability. The outcome of the proceedings remains subject to the Court’s judgment.