Sixteen things changed in V3. Four of them matter.

One sentence per clause, sorted by how much it costs us to miss it.

IHK redline returned 20.08.2026 · triage 25.08.2026 · Y1 49.300 € net

Before you open the file Never “Accept All” or “Reject All”

81 of our own July edits are still sitting unaccepted in this document, next to 28 of theirs. One bulk click either grants every one of their changes — including the unlimited-liability clause below — or deletes our entire July package. It has to be done change by change.

Fight

Unlimited money at stake

These four turn a capped, known risk into an open-ended one. Everything else on this page is money; these are the company.

1 ¶ 104Ziffer 7.3 They pulled four kinds of claim outside the liability cap entirely — data protection, confidentiality, someone else’s copyright, and misusing data for training — which is precisely where a chatbot goes wrong. Say: you’re cutting our required insurance to €2m/€1m in the same document — so cap these at the insurance sum. Three drafts below.
2 Anlage 3no markup The rule capping downtime refunds at 15 % of the yearly operating fee (max 2.700 €) has been quietly deleted, so refunds are now open-ended. Say: put the 15 % cap back.
3 Anlage 3no markup If uptime drops below 95 % in any single month — about 36 hours down — they can cancel the whole contract on the spot, with no warning and no chance to fix it. Say: two consecutive bad months, plus 30 days to cure. That’s the normal market shape.
4 Anlage 3no markup They added a line saying the SLA doesn’t limit their other claims, so they can take the downtime refund and sue us for the same outage. Say: the SLA credits are the remedy, as originally drafted.
Wording

What to propose on item 1

Three fallback positions, in the order to offer them. Each replaces the whole second sentence of ¶ 104 — enter it as a tracked change, never by overwriting.

Two arguments the contract hands us for free

“Data protection” is already unlimited — Ziffer 7.1 (¶ 102) says so in as many words: „…und für Ansprüche nach Art. 82 DSGVO…“ haftet Drift unbeschränkt. […and for claims under Art. 82 GDPR, Drift is liable without limitation.] Their addition therefore captures only contractual data-protection duties beyond the statute, which is almost certainly not what they meant to reach for.

The IHK approves the sources itself — Anlage 1 (¶ 221): „Der Chatbot arbeitet ausschließlich mit einem von Drift kuratierten und von der IHK freigegebenen Quellenkorpus (AllowList).“ [The chatbot works exclusively with a source corpus curated by Drift and approved by the IHK.] So third-party-rights claims — copyright in the corpus — come from material the IHK has signed off. Unlimited liability for those is untenable, and the point is made from their own annex.

Option A

Liability tracks the insurance

open here

Cap those claim types at whatever our policy actually pays out — a level the IHK has just set themselves in the same round of edits. It is very hard to argue that we should owe more than the cover they specified.

Die Haftungsbegrenzung gilt nicht für die in Ziffer 7.1 genannten Fälle. Für Ansprüche wegen schuldhafter Verletzung von Vertraulichkeits- oder Geheimhaltungspflichten, wegen Verletzung von Rechten Dritter oder wegen einer vertragswidrigen Nutzung von Daten des Auftraggebers oder der Endnutzer zu Trainings- oder Weiterentwicklungszwecken ist die Haftung von Drift auf die in Ziffer 7.10 vereinbarten Mindestdeckungssummen je Versicherungsfall begrenzt. Ansprüche nach Art. 82 DSGVO bleiben nach Maßgabe der Ziffer 7.1 unbeschränkt.

[The limitation of liability does not apply to the cases named in clause 7.1. For claims based on culpable breach of confidentiality or secrecy obligations, on infringement of third-party rights, or on use of the client’s or end users’ data contrary to contract for training or further-development purposes, Drift’s liability is limited to the minimum sums insured per claim agreed in clause 7.10. Claims under Art. 82 GDPR remain unlimited in accordance with clause 7.1.]

Option B

Their own original number

if A is refused

If they won’t tie it to insurance, cap those claims at four times the annual fee — the exact figure their own template carried before we ever touched it. Offering a party the number they drafted is a difficult thing for them to call unreasonable.

Die Haftungsbegrenzung gilt nicht für die in Ziffer 7.1 genannten Fälle. Für Ansprüche wegen schuldhafter Verletzung von Vertraulichkeits- oder Geheimhaltungspflichten, wegen Verletzung von Rechten Dritter oder wegen einer vertragswidrigen Nutzung von Daten des Auftraggebers oder der Endnutzer zu Trainings- oder Weiterentwicklungszwecken tritt an die Stelle der vorstehenden Begrenzung eine Begrenzung auf das Vierfache der vom Auftraggeber im jeweiligen Vertragsjahr geschuldeten Gesamtjahresvergütung. Ansprüche nach Art. 82 DSGVO bleiben nach Maßgabe der Ziffer 7.1 unbeschränkt.

[… in place of the foregoing limitation there applies a limitation to four times the total annual remuneration owed by the client in the relevant contract year. Claims under Art. 82 GDPR remain unlimited in accordance with clause 7.1.]

Option C

Keep it unlimited, but narrow it

floor — don’t go below

If they will not accept any cap, three narrowings that cost them nothing in principle: drop data protection (already unlimited under 7.1), require fault, and exclude copyright claims arising from sources the IHK itself approved.

Die Haftungsbegrenzung gilt nicht für die in Ziffer 7.1 genannten Fälle sowie nicht für Ansprüche wegen schuldhafter Verletzung von Vertraulichkeits- oder Geheimhaltungspflichten oder wegen einer vertragswidrigen Nutzung von Daten des Auftraggebers oder der Endnutzer zu Trainings- oder Weiterentwicklungszwecken. Für Ansprüche wegen Verletzung von Rechten Dritter bleibt die Haftungsbegrenzung bestehen, soweit die Rechtsverletzung auf Inhalten oder Quellen beruht, die der Auftraggeber gemäß Anlage 1 freigegeben oder beigestellt hat.

[… For claims based on infringement of third-party rights, the limitation of liability remains in place insofar as the infringement arises from content or sources that the client has approved or supplied under Annex 1.]

Check before sending

All three drafts cross-refer to Ziffer 7.10 (the insurance clause, ¶ 112) and Anlage 1. Confirm those auto-numbers still resolve after the July renumbering — the clause list now runs 1–11 continuously, and one clause between 6.2 and 6.3 is still unnumbered.

Fix

Changes what “finished” means

Survivable individually. Together they decide whether we ever get to call this project done, and whether we can still afford it in year four.

5 ¶ 68Ziffer 4.8 We wrote that the SLA targets are the final word on quality; they deleted “final”, so quality gets judged against the entire original tender document instead. Say: the SLA stays the operative standard for live operation.
6 ¶ 68Ziffer 4.8 They can now claim defects on anything they didn’t test at handover — so signing off closes nothing, and all 24 requirements last week’s audits flagged as unmet stay live indefinitely. Say: yes to defects that weren’t visible — that’s the law anyway — but no to defects they simply chose not to test.
7 ¶ 85after 6.2 They deleted our protection allowing renegotiation if AI model costs rise more than 10 %, on a contract that can run five years with prices locked. Say: it needs mutual agreement, so it gives us nothing unilaterally — it costs you nothing to restore.
8 ¶ 84Ziffer 6.2 The price clause now says two contradictory things at once — 3 % only with their agreement, and 5 % we can do alone — and has to be settled one way or the other. Say: pick one, state it once, delete the other sentence.
Accept

Fair, or simply the law

Taking these visibly is what makes the four above read as a principled position rather than reflexive resistance.

9 ¶ 104Ziffer 7.3 The cap on what we can ever owe is now two years’ fee (about 98.600 €) — and read the markup carefully, because their own template started at four times: we asked for one, they came back at two, so they moved most of the way toward us. Use it: thank them for the movement on the number, then point out that the carve-out in item 1 makes the number meaningless — unlimited is worse than the 4× they started from.
10 ¶ 103Ziffer 7.2 They listed our core duties — uptime, keeping sources current, grounding answers in those sources, guardrails, data protection — which is fine and stays capped, provided item 1 falls. If both stand, data protection is a core duty and uncapped.
11 ¶ 111Ziffer 7.9 They restated the customer’s ordinary legal rights — fix it, pay less, cancel, walk away — which is just German law and can’t be contracted away.
12 ¶ 108Ziffer 7.6 For outages caused by Google or Cloudflare, the SLA now governs only the uptime maths and refunds rather than everything — harmless once items 2–4 are fixed.
13 ¶ 46Ziffer 2.7 The list of what counts as a “hallucination” went from closed to open-ended — slightly broader, but our actual obligation is untouched.
Paperwork

Not negotiations, just work

No argument to win here. Only one of them has an order that matters.

14 ¶ 113 · 114+ Preisblatt The contract still demands 5 million EUR of insurance in two places even though they’ve agreed to drop it — edit those two lines and reject our own price-sheet insertions, and the price falls back to 49.300 €. Order: get the quote at the reduced cover before the price line comes out — we still owe proof of insurance on demand.
15 ¶ 147Anlage 2 The original tender document is named as part of the contract but wasn’t actually attached, even though about fifteen clauses point into it — so just ask them for the file.
16 ¶ 717 · 719 · 721Anlage 6.1–6.3 Our three data-protection annexes still read “to be supplied separately” even though we sent all three on 06.08 — attach them.
Order

What to do, in order

01Go through the redline change by change. Never in bulk.first
02Send the reply, leading with item 1 — the insurance-versus-liability contradiction is our strongest argument and it’s in their own document.Nia
03In the same message: ask for Anlage 2, and confirm which insurance sum covers which type of damage.Nia
04Get the insurance quote at the lower cover before removing the price line.blocking
05When AVV v1.4 comes back, check § 5 — we rewrote their template and their data-protection officer hasn’t reacted yet.pending IHK
06Agree the goldset and test plan together before acceptance opens. 80 % of the build fee turns on acceptance — and item 6 decides how much that acceptance is worth.before 01.10