UK competition litigation – can you use it?

A High Court decision on 15 July 2005 in the case of Attheraces Limited (ATR) v The British Horseracing Board (BHB) demonstrates that litigation in the English courts based on alleged breaches of competition law is alive and well. The case shows how competition law can be used contentiously to gain advantage in commercial negotiations, in this case to force the hand of an allegedly dominant supplier.

BHB manages the British horseracing industry and compiles horseracing data including details about each race, known as "pre-race data". BHB licenses this data to third parties by supplying the data to an unrelated company (PA) which then on- licenses the data. ATR took a licence of pre-race data via PA, but also entered into negotiations with BHB for a direct licence of data. Negotiations ran into difficulty when the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared, in a different case, that BHB had no "database rights" in respect of its pre-race data. BHB then