Database Copyright In Football Fixture Lists

Football Dataco organised professional football matches in England and Scotland. They claimed rights in relation to fixture lists drawn up by them. The defendants, which included betting companies, needed to use the fixture lists, but did not want to pay for them – and claimed to be entitled to do so because the law did not create any rights in the lists. The possible rights were the sui generis database right (Article 7 of The Database Directive), copyright in a database and (Article 3) and copyright under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act.

Floyd J in the High Court held that the fixture lists were the product of selective arrangement of data and were protected by database copyright. However they were not protected by database rights or any other copyright. The Court of Appeal referred the question of database copyright to the ECJ.