Database rights – recent judgment from the Court of Appeal

On 13 July 2005 the Court of Appeal gave its judgment in British Horseracing Board v William Hill Organisation Ltd, the first substantive case concerning database rights in the UK. It was unanimously held by Lord Justices Jacob, Clarke and Pill that William Hill’s appeal against the High Court’s 2001 decision in favour of the British Horseracing Board (BHB) should be allowed, in light of the ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the scope of database rights under EC Directive 96/9 late last year. To view the ECJ judgments on database rights copy and paste the following link into your browser:

http://www.law-now.com/CS2000/internet/EN/co50law-now/co55archive/2004/databaserightsecj.htm

The Court of Appeal ruled that William Hill had not infringed BHB’s database rights. It confirmed the distinction drawn by the ECJ between (i) the creation of the contents of a database and (ii) investment in the obtaining, verification and presentation of those contents. It is only this latter investment, which attracts the protection of the database right. Following submissions to this effect on the part of BHB, the Court of Appeal noted that the ECJ had not misunderstood the facts before it in coming to the conclusion that BHB’s activities in relation to the data used by William Hill fell principally within the category of content creation.

This decision will come as a blow to database right owners – it confirms that the Courts have drawn the boundaries of protection afforded to database right owners rather narrowly.

To view an article containing full details, please copy and paste the following link into your browser:

http://www.law-now.com/CS2000/internet/EN/co50law-now/co55archive/2005/databaserightsecj.htm?section=email

This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq

The original publication date for this article was 15/07/2005.