ABSTRACT
Plaintiffs often lack incentive to enforce low-value claims, weakening defendants’ compliance incentives. The Google Fonts Case offers a unique opportunity to explore whether automated private enforcement increases compliance. After a German court ruled that dynamically embedding Google Fonts violated the GDPR, an Austrian lawyer reportedly used automated tools to detect violations and threaten lawsuits. Using a difference-in-differences approach on a two-year sample of 1,517,429 websites across 32 countries, we find a significant compliance effect in Austria: non-compliance dropped by 22.7 percentage points within three months, a nearly 50% reduction. These findings suggest automated enforcement can be disruptive, pressuring policymakers to recalibrate legal rules.
Jakob Merane and Alexander Stremitzer, Automated private enforcement: evidence from the Google Fonts Case, Journal of Legal Analysis, volume 18, issue 1, pp 182-206 (2026). Published: 24 July 2026.
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