On 15 January 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the "ECJ") handed down a judgment interpreting and clarifying the scope of Directive 96/9/EC (Case C-30/14, Ryanair Ltd v PR Aviation BV). Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases provides for two bases for protection. Firstly, copyright protection is granted where a database, by reason of the selection or arrangement of its contents, constitutes an original creation of the author. No authorisation is required for the normal use of the contents of such a database, except if such content qualifies itself for copyright protection. Secondly, protection is afforded in the form of a sui generis right where a certain investment has been made in the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents of a database. Where the sui generis right applies, the right-holder cannot restrict a user from extracting or reusing insubstantial parts of the database.
The case arose before the national courts of the Netherlands out of a dispute between Ryanair, a leading European low budget airline, and PR Aviation, a low-cost flight comparison website that "screen-scrapes" data from other websites. PR Aviation imported publically available data automatically from various airlines' websites, including Ryanair's, allowing customers to search through flight data such as prices and even book flights. The use of Ryanair's website required that viewers tick a box to accept its terms and conditions. At the material time of this case, Ryanair's terms and conditions set out that its website had exclusive authorisation to sell Ryanair flights. Further, an express prohibition on the use of "automated systems or software to extract data" from the website was included in these terms and conditions unless a licence agreement had been agreed upon with Ryanair.
As part of its appeal before the Netherlands Supreme Court, Ryanair argued that there had been a contractual infringement by PR Aviation when it extracted data from Ryanair's site without first obtaining a written licence agreement. It was in this context that the Netherlands Supreme Court referred a question to the ECJ.
The essence of the question is whether Directive 96/9/EC applies to a database which does not meet the criteria for copyright protection or those of sui generis protection and must be interpreted as meaning that the freedom to use such a database cannot be contractually limited.
The ECJ rejected PR Aviation's argument that Directive 96/9/EC confers a wide scope of protection on the concept of databases and clarifies that the Directive's protection only applies where either the conditions for copyright protection or sui generis protection under Directive 96/9/EC are satisfied. It is not enough that the database corresponds to the definition of database under Article 1(2) of Directive 96/9/EC.
PR Aviation had cited Article 15 of Directive 96/9/EC, which affirms the mandatory nature of certain provisions by declaring null and void any contractual provision to the contrary. The ECJ, however, reiterated that this only applies to databases protected by Directive 96/9/EC and therefore does not apply to the conditions of use of databases not covered by the Directive.
The ruling confirms that Ryanair can rely on its contractual rights to continue restricting and even preventing PR Aviation from extracting data from the Ryanair database and using this information for commercial purposes. Owners of an online database such as Ryanair's may use contractual restrictions to prevent the copying or use of their databases where these databases do not meet the criteria under Directive 96/9/EC and provided this is in line with applicable national law.
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