German court rules tell-a-friend functionality to be spam (in German)

I thought this was interesting, although limited to Germany: a court has ruled against a company offering a "tell a friend" button. They had implemented the tell a friend functionality so that people could enter other people's email address, but then a "x wants to tell you how great we are" mail was send from the companies account.

It would have been less likely to be rules as spam if the recommendation mail had been sent from the recommending persons account. Also apparently there should not be incentives to enter as many email addresses as possible (like "invite a friend and you get 10% off your next purchase"). All in all the "tell-a-friend" functionality seems to be a gray area according to that court.