German Court Overturns Datteln's iPad-Only School Tablet Tender and Orders a Re-Run

A town that already runs around 2,700 iPads in its schools wanted 665 more, and wrote the brand into the tender. The Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf (Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf, Vergabesenat) ruled on 2 September 2026 that the town of Datteln in North Rhine-Westphalia must re-run the procurement and reassess whether an iPad-only specification can be justified.

Quick answer: Datteln tendered 665 Apple tablets with cases in 2025 and justified the choice with its existing Apple fleet, its device-management platform and the cost of mixing systems. Samsung objected, lost before the Westphalia Procurement Chamber (Vergabekammer Westfalen) in August 2025, appealed, and won. The court did not say iPads are off limits: a brand-specific tender remains possible under narrow conditions. It said the town's file did not show, concretely and with plausible figures, why other tablets would not do. If you sell IT hardware to German public buyers, this ruling shows just how concrete a buyer's justification for a brand-only specification needs to be.

The case in five numbers

• 665 Apple tablets with protective cases, tendered by Datteln in 2025 in an open procedure (press reports round this to 650 or 670; the town's own statement says around 700)
• Around 2,700 iPads already in use in Datteln's schools, bought during the pandemic years
• 13 August 2025: the Procurement Chamber rejected Samsung's application; 2 September 2026: the court overturned that decision
• 7 schools affected: five primary schools, one Realschule and one Gymnasium, all run by the town
• €5 billion from federal and state governments under Digitalpakt 2.0 over five years, split half and half and launched 1 September 2026, following €6.5 billion in federal funding under the first Digitalpakt from 2019

What the court decided

The town broke the rule on product-neutral specifications and, through it, the rule on equal treatment of bidders. Those are the two legal findings in the court's press release: a breach of § 31 Abs. 6 S. 1 VgV, the procurement regulation, and of § 97 Abs. 2 GWB, the competition act. The decision overturns the Procurement Chamber's ruling of 13 August 2025 and is final. Case number: VII-Verg 38/25.

A brand-specific tender is still possible. The senate, under presiding judge Dr. Christine Maimann, said such a specification can be permitted exceptionally, under certain conditions, but a buyer must handle it narrowly and restrictively, must set out its reasons concretely and, where necessary, prove them. Its key sentence for anyone who has been told "it has to fit our existing systems": a blanket reference to presumed incompatibility problems or other general technical considerations is not sufficient, and neither are general economic considerations.

Datteln's file fell short on the specifics, and the court gave examples: no concrete figures on the effort and cost of changing the town's mobile device management system, some of the calculations that were submitted were partly implausible, and the objections to running tablets of different manufacturers side by side were too sweeping and not substantiated. Whether a tie to one manufacturer carries over to future purchases is, the senate said, always a case-by-case decision.

Who argued what

Datteln's position was that switching systems was unreasonable. "A system change would involve very considerable complications and would not be reasonable for the town of Datteln," Jörn Rasmußen, the town's head of IT and digitalisation officer, told the WAZ newspaper in March. In the tender the town said all pupils and teachers already had this manufacturer's tablets, that the purchase replaced part of the fleet and covered new need, and that important technical and economic reasons justified departing from product neutrality: the central device-management platform would have to be replaced at a considerable cost in time, and linking different makes could cause problems.

Samsung's objection cited the neutrality rule in § 121 GWB and § 31 Abs. 6 S. 1 VgV, and the competition, non-discrimination and equal-treatment principles in § 97 Abs. 1, 2 and 6 GWB. The town did not remedy the objection, the Procurement Chamber sided with the town, and Samsung filed an immediate appeal (sofortige Beschwerde) to the senate.

The EU rule behind this is Article 42(4) of Directive 2014/24/EU, which has two routes. Specifications shall not refer to a specific make, trade mark or type "with the effect of favouring or eliminating certain undertakings or certain products" unless that is justified by the subject-matter of the contract. Separately, where the contract cannot otherwise be described sufficiently precisely, a reference may be used on an exceptional basis if accompanied by "or equivalent". The Court of Justice confirmed both routes in April 2026 (Sof Medica, C-568/24) and read the subject-matter exception restrictively: only where the requirement follows inevitably from the subject-matter. § 31 Abs. 6 VgV transposes both, with the same "oder gleichwertig".

The response

Datteln will comply and is weighing its next step. "That is not good news for the pupils in Datteln who are waiting for a new tablet," Mayor André Dora said in the town's statement on 2 September. "We will of course accept the decision, even if it means a further delay and a new tender." Before the ruling Dora had told the Dattelner Morgenpost that a restart would push delivery to 2027; afterwards, as dpa reports, he said: "We are now losing many more months and still cannot deliver tablets to the pupils."

Samsung welcomed the ruling. "Our concern is to promote conditions that enable fair competition and give schools the long-term freedom to choose technology according to educational, technical and economic criteria," the company said.

Datteln is not unusual. Many towns specify the brand already in use, the municipal associations told dpa. Legally the decision binds only Datteln's purchase. heise reports it as the first final court decision after a series of challenges Samsung has brought across Germany.

iPad-only school tenders have survived challenges before. In July 2021 the Brandenburg Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht Brandenburg, 19 Verg 2/21) heard an Android supplier's appeal against a school authority's iPad-only tender. In an interim decision it found the restriction likely justified, partly because the buyer's device-management software then offered certain functions only for iOS devices, and it refused to extend the appeal's suspensive effect.

What is still open

As of 5 September the town has not published a timetable for the new procedure. Netzpolitik says the wait is now at least another half year; the mayor expects delivery in 2027. Nobody has published the contract value or the cost of the two-instance proceedings, and the town has not said whether it will document an iPad-only case more fully or open the field.

What to do now

• Brand name in the title or the specification? Check whether the documents say "oder gleichwertig". If they do not, look for the buyer's justification for why the brand-specific requirement follows from the subject-matter of the contract. If that is unclear, raise it in a bidder question before the deadline.
• Want to object? Above the EU thresholds, § 160 Abs. 3 GWB gives you ten calendar days from recognising a breach to raise it with the buyer; breaches visible from the notice or from the procurement documents must be raised by the application or bid deadline; after the buyer's refusal you have 15 calendar days to file with the Procurement Chamber. Below the thresholds, kommunal.de notes § 23 UVgO carries a similar principle but state rules vary.
• Selling into an installed base of another brand? Bring your own migration and mixed-fleet figures to the buyer. Those figures are what the buyer now needs in its file, and what the Düsseldorf senate looked for and did not find.

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