Information
1.) These Terms of Use define the rules for the public user relationship with the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia when services of this website are used, including any search and retrieval of data as well as storing and printing hard copies of commercial register information. Provisions in Section 9 of the German Commercial Code (HGB), Sections 52 and 53 of the German Commercial Register Regulation (HRV) as amended shall be applicable.
2.) The use of commercial register data is permitted for information purposes to any user.
3.) For data retrieval, fees shall be charged under the provisions in no. 1140 and 1141 of the cost index provided under the judicial administration costs law. For each retrieval of information available under a single commercial register number (current printout, chronological printout, historic printout, company proprietor data, document retrieval, structured register content) a separate fee will be charged to the amount as provided below:
| Aktueller Abdruck (AD) | 4,50 EUR |
| Chronologischer Abdruck (CD) | 4,50 EUR |
| Historischer Abdruck (HD) | 4,50 EUR |
| Dokument | 1,50 EUR |
| Unternehmensträgerdaten (UT) | 0,00 EUR |
| Veröffentlichungen (VÖ) | 0,00 EUR |
| Strukturierter Registerinhalt (SI) | 4,50 EUR |
4.) Such fees will be charged regardless of whether or not for the specific registration number any data had been retrieved before or during the same session. No expenditures shall be charged.
5.) The fees will be charged in the month following the date of retrieval of data.
6.) If commercial register data is retrieved from a federal state which under the provisions of laws of this state does not charge fees for the respective service, then in such cases no fees will be charged.
7.) Commercial register data retrieved free of charge may be used only for such purposes for which the free-of-charge service is specifically provided. Commercial register data must not be passed on to any third party. All employees of institutions providing free-of-charge retrieval service who get access to user identification are required to specifically agree to comply with these Terms of Use.
8.) If legal entities or other public-sector institutions in some individual German states are not entitled to use the retrieval service free of charge, then for any data retrieval in such federal states the user shall receive by email an itemised list including date, time and search results (court, registration type, registration number) of the data viewed.
9.) Commercial register data retrieved may be used and disseminated only to the extent allowed under applicable data protection regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU 2016/679 of 27.04.2016) and the data protection laws of the federal government and the federal states in Germany.
10.) It is not allowed to make more than 60 retrievals per hour. Upon infringement of this provision the respective user ID may be disabled. In case a user can provide justifiable reasons for a more frequent retrieval rate, such user has the option, upon prior agreement with the service centre of the register portal, to be allowed to retrieve information at a more frequent rate for a limited period of time.
For data retrievals from federal states in which he is not charged the subscriber is additionally bound to use the retrieved data only for those purposes for which fees are not levied and not to pass on the data to third parties. All employees of the establishment for which a fee is not levied who are granted access to the user ID are individually bound to comply with these Regulations of Use.
As part of the information provided to visitors, this website includes also some links or references to other websites. As a rule, the respective provider of these third-party websites is responsible for such information. The state of North Rhine-Westphalia only provides access to these contents.
At the time when the link or reference has been provided to a third-party site its contents had been checked as to whether the information made available there could cause a possible civil or criminal liability. Nevertheless, we have no influence on the current or future design, the contents or the copyright on the third-party websites to which we provide a link or reference. Therefore, we expressly point out that we do not assume any responsibility for the contents provided on any such website we refer to and which has been changed after we have installed a link to its contents on our website.
The provider of the linked page alone shall be liable for illegal, faulty or incomplete content, and in particular for losses resulting from the use or non-use of information provided in this way and not the one who merely by way of web links refers to such publications made available on the internet.
If not indicated otherwise, all pages on this information server are protected by the copyright law. This applies in particular to texts, pictures and charts, including their arrangement on the websites. Reproduction or use of such pages (or any parts thereof) in other electronic or print publications and their publication (including making them public on the internet) is not permitted without a prior consent of the copyright holder.
A publication or further use of data published on these pages under the name "register of companies" (Handelsregister) is not permitted (Section 8 subsection 2 of the German Commercial Code). Some pictures, charts, text or other files as a whole or in part can be protected by a copyright held by a third party.
All trademarks referred to in this internet presentation, which may be protected under a copyright held by a third party, are fully subject to the provisions of the trademark ownership laws currently effective for the registered owner. By mentioning a trademark in this web presentation we do not allow to draw a conclusion that the specific trademark mentioned on these pages is not protected by a copyright of a third party.
The national provisions based on which under Article 3 paragraphs 5, 6 and 7 of the Directive 2009/101/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 September 2009 on coordination of safeguards which, for the protection of the interests of members and third parties, are required by Member States of companies within the meaning of the second paragraph of Article 54 of the Treaty, with a view to making such safeguards equivalent (EC No L 258, 1.10.2009, p.11) third parties can refer to the facts as indicated in Article 2 of the same Directive, are contained in Section 15 of the German Commercial Code.
Under this provision:
In a dispute with any third party the company can refer only to such facts which have been duly registered and published or which had already been known to such third party (Section 15 subsection 1 of the German Commercial Code). A third party has to accept such facts that have been duly registered and published. This shall not apply to legal acts which have been taken within fifteen days upon publishing, if the third party is able to prove that it neither had knowledge of the fact nor was required to know such fact (Section 15 subsection 2 of the German Commercial Code). If a fact had not been registered properly then the third party, in a dispute with the party who is required to register the fact, is entitled to refer to the fact as it had been published, unless such third party had knowledge of the faulty registration (Section 15 subsection 3 of the German Commercial Code).
In the common register of the federal states the German judiciary authorities provide the opportunity to view entries into the registers of companies in all federal states from any PC workstation at any time. In addition to the registers of companies you are able to access data in the registers of cooperatives and partnerships and to some extent you can access the data in the register of associations.
You can search for registered companies and corporations even if you do not know the particular register number. The contents of the registered data are provided in various forms as a PDF document and can be saved electronically or printed out as a hard copy.
We provide the information in the following form:
- current hard copy printout with a summary of all currently valid entries,
- chronological hard copy printout with all data provided since the register has been transferred to its electronic form,
- historical hard copy printout with all data that were valid until the register was transferred to its electronic form.
The relevance to the current situation of the data you can view in the register is guaranteed. You will receive authentic data from the official register, because a search is always performed among the real-time data of the register of companies.
In addition, in the rgister portal you can download documents that had been submitted to the register court by electronic means and belong to the so-called register folder, including registration application, share holder lists and company’s articles of association. You can also get information about the current announcements provided in the register.
For detailed information on what parts of the register the individual states have provided please refer to the state info.
The registration to use the register portal is free of charge. No fees will be charged for a search for companies performed in the register and for viewing the company data, neither will you be charged for using the announcements in the register.
For each information retrieved to a specific number in the register (current hard copy printout, chronological hard copy printout, historic hard copy printout, retrieval of documents) a fee will be charged to the amount as shown below, irrespective of whether any data has been retrieved for the specified register number before or in the same session. Expenses will not be charged.
The amount charged is based on the No 1140, 1141 of the list of the costs of the Administration of Justice Expenses Act.
| Aktueller Abdruck (AD) | 4,50 EUR |
| Chronologischer Abdruck (CD) | 4,50 EUR |
| Historischer Abdruck (HD) | 4,50 EUR |
| Dokument | 1,50 EUR |
| Unternehmensträgerdaten (UT) | 0,00 EUR |
| Veröffentlichungen (VÖ) | 0,00 EUR |
| Strukturierter Registerinhalt (SI) | 4,50 EUR |
At the beginning of the following month, the service centre will send to you an AoC (Advice of Charge) by e-mail. In addition to the retrieval data, this AoC will also indicate the amount of fees payable as well as the user's file reference number which can be used to retrieve a registry sheet. An invoice will be sent by regular mail with the amount of fees payable. As an alternative, you may also participate in the SEPA direct debit scheme.
You must apply online. For that purpose please fill in the form in the section registration. Here you will register the access data of your choice consisting of a user name and a password. Based on the details provided by you, an application form will be generated which then will be sent to the service centre of the common register portal of the German federal states at the district court (Amtsgericht) in Hagen.
Once the registration has been checked and the user ID activated you will receive written notification by post from the service department ( contact to the service department ). You can then carry out searches in all the register data of the federal states.
Sofern sich Änderungen Ihrer Daten ergeben, teilen Sie diese bitte unter Angabe der Kunden-Nr. und/oder des Benutzernamens per E-Mail, Fax oder Post der hiesigen Servicestelle mit. Die Kontaktdaten der Servicestelle finden Sie here .
Through the document retrieval service you can always receive any document available for a company in the register folder. But you will find here only documents that have been submitted to the register court electronically.
If you are not able to access a specific document you are looking for in the register portal, you can apply at the competent register court for this document to be made available online. Such a document may not be older than ten years. In addition, this service provided upon individual application is subject to a charge (currently 2.00 euros per page, minimum charge is 25.00 euros).
Link to the search in the court database
Annual accounts and balance sheets cannot be accessed through this register portal. These documents are provided only via the Business Register of the Federal Gazette (Bundesanzeiger).
The respective district courts who maintain the registers are responsible for the entries made into the individual registers. For any queries about the contents of the entries please contact the respective district court (Amtsgericht).
Link to the search in the court database
Responsible for this error is a setting in the Internet Explorer. Please check whether you have marked the option “Do not save encrypted pages on hard disk” in the Internet Options in the tab “Advanced” under “Security”. If you have selected this option, it will prevent any encrypted file that has been transmitted from being saved, thus preventing you also from displaying the file on the screen. You can tell that a transmission of data has been encrypted by the yellow lock symbol in the status bar and by the protocol indication “https://” in the address bar of the Internet Explorer. For security reasons all register excerpts will be transmitted in an encrypted form.
The register portal is frequently a target for automated bulk queries. Very often the frequency of such bulk queries can reach an extent that will constitute an offence under the statutory provisions of Sections 303a and b of the German Criminal Code. Due to this situation we have banned any queries that will originate from the so-called TOR (TOR = the onion routing) network. In addition to this, we will ban any individual IP address any time when the conditions for the offence as described above shall occur. In both cases the person who has issued a query will see an error message quoted above.
It can occasionally occur that individual IP addresses will be banned due to a mistake. In such cases, even a legitimate query can result in the error message mentioned above.
If you have any question, please call the respective service phone number for the transparency register provided on the start page at www.transparenzregister.de. Unfortunately, the service office of the register portal cannot answer your questions with regard to the transparency register.
