September 2008
Ryanair Flies Past the Screen Scrapers
Ryanair has recently claimed Court victories against several companies engaging in the process of ‘screen scraping’, including against Vtours.de in Germany, Bravofly.com in Ireland and Edreams in Spain. This practice is used extensively in the travel and insurance industries by price comparison websites, and effectively involves lifting details from one website to produce a mirror image of the original page on another. The price comparison website fill in the fields on the Ryanair website and transpose the results through their own alternate website and applying their own charges on top of the Ryanair price. Among those accused of the practice are Ebookers, Opodo and Lastminute.com.
Whilst this practice is welcomed by many in the industry, Ryanair opposes the practice, indicating that it slows the website down, and misleads passengers into paying additional service charges and handling fees, with a mark up of up to 300% in some cases. Passengers are also not given email updates regarding changes to flight details as these are sent to the price comparison company who booked the flight rather than the customer. Ryanair also adds that the purchase of tickets from any other website than Ryanair is prohibited by their own terms and conditions.
On 5 August 2008 Ryanair issued a statement indicating that as of 11 August 2008 they would no longer be honouring tickets sold through such websites. The European Commission took an interest in this position, sending a letter to Ryanair seeking to clarify their position on 20 August 2008. On 22 August 2008 Michael O’Leary of Ryanair responded to this letter citing examples of the many websites engaging in the practice and asked the Commission to investigate. On 10 September 2008 a further letter was sent by Ryanair to the Commission following media statements.
Ryanair has alleged that the practice amounts to Copyright and database infringement, passing off and breach of website terms of use. The Commission has yet to respond.
Briffa says
Whilst Ryanair are correct that the terms and conditions prevent tickets being purchased through other websites, the price comparison websites may say that their contract is not with Ryanair, and therefore the conditions do not apply to them. Users of the official Ryanair website would normally check a box indicating they have read the terms and conditions prior to purchase. The price comparison websites could argue that their use amounted to fair use in the circumstances.
The other legal arguments stand more weight. Clearly if Ryanair prohibit the practice, and use of their name, logo, or trade mark association would amount to passing off. The user would however have to be misled into believing there was an association between Ryanair and that price comparison or travel website, although this is likely. Clearly use of the logo and trademark would amount to copyright and trade mark infringement. Database rights would also be relevant as the copyright in the layout of the data on the website may have been infringed; data which Ryanair will have spent time and effort creating. All of these amount to intellectual property infringement for which Ryanair are entitled to take action.
Whilst the effort of Ryanair to protect and exploit their trademark is commendable, the European Commission may well have an issue with customers being denied travel having purchased tickets innocently from the price comparison websites, which may be against EU Directives in force. A decision is awaited from the Commission.
For more information contact info@briffa.com