AVM wants to ban the sale of second-hand FritzBox routers with custom firmware

Router manufacturer AVM wants to sue the German reseller Woog for selling FritzBox routers with custom firmware. Woog buys second-hand routers and installs their own firmware on them, but according to AVM, this poses security risks.

AVM wants to force Woog through the courts to stop selling 20,000 FritzBox 6490 routers. According to ComputerBase, AVM invokes European trademark law. In doing so, a company can prevent another company from using the brand name. Woog is a reseller that buys up used routers and provides them with open source firmware.

AVM says the original firmware works best with the routers. The devices would become less secure with new firmware. Woog, however, says the opposite. The company states that the second-hand routers are years old and therefore have outdated firmware. AVM also denounces that resellers remove certain functionality from the routers in this way. The manufacturer relies on a 2004 ruling by the German Federal Court of Justice, which ruled that companies could prohibit resellers from removing the SIM function from telephones.

Woog says it had previously sold 10,000 such routers. AVM had that stopped at the time by a regional court in Munich. AVM now has to prove before a judge that Woog infringes the trademark right. If the manufacturer wins the lawsuit, Woog must stop selling.