Introduction

By its judgment of 25 June 2026, the Municipal Court in Prague brought to a final and binding conclusion a court dispute that had lasted almost exactly four years between the operator of the website www.ac24.cz and one of the mobile operators. On the merits, the court upheld the judgment of the District Court for Prague 4, which had granted our client the right to compensation for lost profit caused by a breach of statutory law and European Union law — specifically, the unlawful blocking of access to the website by the defendant operator.

The Municipal Court in Prague thereby confirmed the conclusions it had already expressed in its resolution of 29 February 2024, about which we previously informed you, and affirmed the obligation of one of the internet access providers — which in February 2022 decided to unlawfully block our client’s website — to compensate our client for the lost profit caused by that unlawful blocking.

This final and binding judgment of the Municipal Court in Prague is of a genuinely precedential nature, extending well beyond the interests of our client as an individual party. It confirms that freedom of expression is far more important than individual, often fleeting and subjective opinions, since its very purpose is to protect expressions with which we may not agree and which may, at a given time and place, appear controversial or undesirable to someone.

Case summary

It is worth briefly recalling the factual and procedural background of the dispute.

In February 2022, an unprecedented situation arose in the Czech Republic in which private-law entities — as the defendant operator itself acknowledged in these proceedings — blocked specifically designated websites, including the website operated by our client, in connection with a legally non-binding appeal by the State (Resolution of the Government of the Czech Republic No. 127 of 25 February 2022 and the related call issued the same day by the National Cyber Operations Centre).

In June 2022 — after our client had unsuccessfully sought, by way of preliminary injunctions, to have the blocking of its website lifted, since the courts required facts and evidence that our client could not have possessed at the time — we filed, on the client’s behalf, an action against one of the operators seeking to have the blocking lifted. Because the blocking had reduced the website’s traffic and consequently caused a loss of profit, we also filed, on the client’s behalf, an action for compensation for the harm caused precisely by this unlawful blocking; this, however, was purely an ancillary consequence of the unprecedented unlawful blocking itself.

In its first judgment of 12 September 2023, the court of first instance in fact approved the manifestly unlawful conduct of the defendant operator, dismissing our client’s action in its entirety. That judgment had to be set aside by the Municipal Court in Prague on appeal by our client.

The court of first instance subsequently made use of this “retrial,” and by judgment of 9 October 2025 granted our client the right to compensation for lost profit caused by the breach of law consisting in one of the operators having unlawfully denied access to the website. This judgment was in turn finally upheld on the merits by the Municipal Court in Prague, sitting as the appellate court, on 25 June 2026.

Website Blocking as a Flagrant Breach of EU Law and the Principles of Open Internet Access

A wholly central role in this dispute was played by Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council, the so-called Open Internet (net neutrality) Regulation (the “Regulation”).

Article 3 of the Regulation lays down the obligations of operators (providers of internet access services) to ensure open internet access, providing, among other things, that: “Providers of internet access services shall not engage in traffic management measures going beyond those set out in the second subparagraph, and shall in particular not block, slow down, alter, restrict, interfere with, degrade or discriminate between specific content, applications or services, or specific categories thereof.”

In other words, quite apart from the general safeguards prohibiting restrictions on freedom of expression and prohibiting censorship, which are primarily directed at the State, the Regulation establishes a general prohibition of censorship applicable at the level of operators as well.

There are three clear exceptions to this prohibition, namely:

– compliance with legal obligations;

– preserving the integrity and security of the network; and

– preventing impending network congestion,

none of which, in the view of the general courts, was met in this case.

It should be noted that the Municipal Court in Prague, consistent with our argument, already concluded in its resolution of 29 February 2024 that the blocking carried out by the individual operators did not fall within any of these exceptions and that blocking by an operator is therefore contrary to a directly binding piece of European Union legislation, thereby giving rise to an obligation to compensate our client for the harm suffered.

The appellate court further expressly stated that the operators were not obliged to comply with the State’s legally non-binding appeals, since “no binding instruction was given to the service providers within the framework of a decision of a public authority possessing the relevant competence,” and that what was involved was therefore “a non-binding political proclamation of a recommending nature.”

The appellate court further added that the unlawful conduct of the operators bears the hallmarks of “de facto censorship of the content of users‘ websites, which, under the conditions prevailing in the Czech Republic, is prohibited by Article 17(3) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms as part of the constitutional order.”

Even after this wholly unambiguous resolution of the appellate court, it nevertheless took our client more than a further two years before its claim was finally and bindingly upheld by the courts.

Summary and Conclusion

In conclusion, it must be stressed that this dispute was not merely a dispute over compensation for lost profit amounting to a few tens of thousands of Czech koruna. Rather, it was a dispute over whether, at a decisive moment, the Czech courts would stand firm and make clear that freedom of speech and expression takes precedence over transient geopolitics, political proclamations, and non-legal, easily abused labels such as “disinformation.” We are pleased that both the District Court for Prague 4 and the Municipal Court in Prague passed this test successfully.

The courts thereby expressly confirmed that the Czech Republic is a democratic state governed by the rule of law, in which the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms are of paramount importance. At the same time, they expressed trust in citizens that they do not need anyone to dictate the “truth” to them, and that citizens themselves are best placed to decide what information they wish to receive and what they do not. The notion that citizens need someone to sort out for them what they may and may not read would be an exceedingly unfortunate indictment — whether of the citizens themselves or of the Czech judiciary.

The operator’s conduct must be viewed very critically, as it constitutes an extraordinary excess bearing features akin to censorship, involving the review and blocking of the content of specific websites. We therefore welcome the fact that, after nearly four years of litigation, the general courts have conclusively established that whoever carried out the blocking acted wholly unlawfully, in breach of the Regulation, and is accordingly liable to compensate the harm caused.

Although a constitutional complaint against the judgment of the Municipal Court in Prague is admissible, we would be very surprised if the Constitutional Court — assuming the defendant operator were to file such a complaint — were, in light of the foregoing, to intervene and alter the judgments of the general courts.

AK Sudolska Team                                                                              

[1] https://www.aksudolska.cz/zajimavosti-z-prava/konec-cenzury-v-ceske-republice-blokovane-weby-maji-narok-na-nahradu-ujmy-zpusobene-nezakonnou-blokaci-v-roce-2022/

[2] https://www.aksudolska.cz/zajimavosti-z-prava/mestsky-soud-v-praze-konstatoval-nezakonnost-blokace-webu-ze-strany-operatoru/

[3] Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 laying down measures concerning open internet access and amending Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users‘ rights relating to electronic communications networks and services and Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 on roaming on public mobile communications networks within the Union.

[4] Cf. judgment of the Supreme Administrative Court of 9 August 2023, Case No. 7 As 22/2023, and point 7 of the resolution of the Municipal Court in Prague of 29 February 2024, Case No. 20 Co 6/2024-296. [5] Point 9 of the resolution of the Municipal Court in Prague of 29 February 2024, Case No. 20 C

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