You replied to:

> In Germany, all costs associated with a lawsuit have to be paid/reimbursed by the losing party.

with:

> That is already how it works in US civil litigation.

An optional agreement between parties is absolutely not the same as a mandatory, by-default, loser pays system. And yes, in my case getting an agreement like that was certainly going to be impossible.

Also, re: Google and Oracle, the payment was after petitioning the judge - as often happens - and those costs were awarded because the lawsuit was particularly pointless. Yet even then they did not include millions of dollars in discovery costs, so Google got much less than 100% of their legal costs: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/25667/oracle_must_pay_google_... I do not believe you are correct in saying there was any prior agreement.

Civil suits are optional. Discussions between parties in civil suits are mostly optional. The only thing about that isn't optional are the procedures and a final ruling on the matter. In most cases of civil suits the lawyers negotiate the expenditures going in. This is why many plaintiff lawyers won't accept every case that comes their way.