ECJ Gives Judgment Regarding Contractual Database Protection For Airline Website Datasets

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.