Online travel agencies who extract and sell flight schedules and price data from the Ryanair website are “substantially overcharging” the airline’s customers for things like extra baggage and reserved seats, it has been claimed in the Commercial Court.
Ryanair DAC has brought proceedings against Spanish firm eDreams Odigeo SA, part of the eDO group, and its subsidiary Vacaciones eDreams SL. They operate through various websites including eDreams, Opodo, Govoyages and Travellink.
Ryanair is seeking a number of reliefs including an order restraining the defendants from breaching its terms of use, engaging in misrepresentation, passing off or infringing the airline’s intellectual property rights. It also seeks damages.
The defendants deny the claims.
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On Monday, the airline sought but failed to have the case admitted to the fast-track commercial list, with eDreams objecting on grounds including there had been a delay in bringing it.
Martin Hayden SC, for Ryanair, argued there had been no culpable delay in bringing the case.
He said Ryanair had been engaged in dealing with several others proceedings against the online agencies in Spain and Germany, which had to be referred to in any proceedings brought here.
He said all the cases over screen scraping involve similar conduct. The online agencies had approached the matter on the basis that they are not the ones doing it but have engaged third parties to do so, he said. When efforts were made to stop the screen scraping, ways were found around it, he said.
Rather than bringing cases against several small operators, Ryanair took cases against larger operators like Onthebeach, which took a major length of time to resolve and which ultimately led to distribution agreements with four operators, he said. Similar negotiations with eDreams came to nothing.
Ryanair had been prohibited in Spain from referring to the online agencies as “pirates”, but they are “parasitic enterprises” operating at the expense of the airline, he said.
Consumers who avail of the online agencies’ service are being “substantially overcharged” by up to 200 per cent more for the same services provided by Ryanair, he said. This is done through their “prime” services in which the consumer pays extra through hidden markups for things like baggage and reserved seats, he claimed.
Michael Howard SC, for the defendants, said delay in bringing commercial cases is not about the parties’ interests but about the proper use of the court’s limited resources. A plaintiff cannot say: “I will litigate at my leisure,” he said.
Ryanair claimed the online agencies desisted from selling its flights for 50 days last year but in fact the airline had adopted sophisticated blocking measures to prevent it. There was delay both before issuing proceedings and further delay afterwards, he said.
Mr Justice Mark Sanfey refused to admit the case to the fast-track commercial division, which means it will now go through the High Court’s ordinary process.
He said there can be legitimate commercial reasons for not suing straight away. However, once negotiations broke down with eDreams last March about signing a distribution agreement with Ryanair, the airline was aware it should have issued proceedings immediately, he said.
The defendants have denied Ryanair’s claims. In an affidavit replying to the airline’s application for entry to the commercial list, Guillaume Teissonniere, general counsel and company secretary of the eDO group, said his client refused to accept the same “unreasonable terms” it had imposed on other online agencies who entered distribution agreements.
While other agencies might be willing to accept those terms “to put an end to Ryanair’s coercive behaviour, the defendants were, and are not, willing to accept”, he said.
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