An online travel agent who allegedly “screen scrapes” Ryanair’s website information is also abusing the airline’s literary works by doing so, it has been claimed in High Court proceedings.
Ryanair has provided additional updated claims in its 13-year-old action against the On the Beach (OTB) web agent over what it says is the unlawful scraping of content from the airline’s website so the agent can sell Ryanair flights as part of holiday packages.
OTB denies the claims and has accused Ryanair of anticompetitive behaviour.
In its original claim, launched in 2010, Ryanair claimed that by accessing its website, OTB is bound by its terms and conditions but it has in reality attempted to breach those terms and pass off its own website as that of Ryanair.
Progress in the case began to accelerate following a March 2022 decision of the London High Court to refuse Ryanair a stay on anti-competition/abuse of dominant position proceedings OTB had brought against Ryanair UK Ltd and Ryanair DAC in that jurisdiction.
Ryanair had claimed a stay was needed until the Irish screen scraping case was dealt with.
It said OTB was attempting to run virtually the same case for abuse of dominance under English and EU law, in two different jurisdictions and thereby creating the risk of irreconcilable judgments. OTB opposed the stay.
Following the English decision, an issue in the Irish proceedings came before Mr Justice David Nolan over whether an appendix from the English proceedings - outlining what OTB said was Ryanair’s anti-competitive behaviour - could be included in the OTB defence to the screen scraping case.
Mr Justice Nolan directed that the appendix should be struck out but that OTB should be allowed to amend its defence to plead the matters contained in the appendix.
Earlier, the judge noted that other than the lodging of a statement of claim and dealing with “replies to particulars” sought by each side, little else happened in the Irish case between 2010 and 2020 when there was a notice of change of solicitor.
However, it could be said the London court decision accelerated matters and saw Ryanair take “a tougher approach to the prosecution of these (Irish) proceedings”, he said.
The judge said in March 2023 an amended statement of claim was submitted by Ryanair in which it gave more detail about the importance of its website, the need for it to maintain direct contact with its customers and how the website is used to promote its business, among other things.
Ryanair also said it had set up a defence system against the screen scraping but OTB had been able to circumvent it.
Under a heading related to “Copyright and Database Rights”, Ryanair made a new case concerning the compromise of its “copyright and database rights and an abuse of its literary works”, the judge said.
This was on the basis that the database was an “original database” which had been compromised by OTB in the manner in which it infringed or authorised the infringement of it, the judge said.
OTB filed a defence which put in issue all the Ryanair claims including the airline’s “terms of use”, the “original database” and the claim that the website constituted an “original literary work” for the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000.
It also pleaded that the airline’s “terms of use” constituted an anti-competitive agreement and/or instruments used in furtherance of the abuse of Ryanair’s dominant position.
The judge said in pleading these matters OTB repeatedly referred to the disputed appendix from the English case.
He found the use of the appendix in the context of this case is inappropriate but there was nothing to stop OTB from pleading the anti-competitive claims in the traditional way.
He said he will hear from the parties later on the nature of the order that should be made.
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