Uber pretended to not be part of the transaction, while they were a) the public face to the customer, b) offering the ride at a given price, c) negotiated with a specific driver to fulfill it (and only then got the middleman on board to sign off on the transaction).

As usual for Uber they went for the sketchiest way possible to deal with regulations, as if they're looking for ways to argue about them in court as often as possible.

Their problem: no court (except one) in Germany makes law because we don't have the Anglo-saxon concept of case law.