Ryanair bid to force price comparison site to hand over customer details fails

Ryanair has lost an appeal over its efforts to get a price comparison website operator to provide it with the email addresses of customers who book through online agencies.

In 2020, the High Court refused the airline an injunction restraining Skyscanner and two associated companies from allegedly facilitating the sale of Ryanair flights through other online agents like lastminute.com and kiwi.com as part of a legal action which has yet to be heard.

In that case, Ryanair claims there is unlawful “screen scraping” by Skyscanner, involving the use of software to interact with the Irish airline’s website to extract and use information like prices and timetables for commercial gain. It says this is in breach of the use of the terms of its website and its intellectual property rights.

In the meantime, it argued, an injunction was required to stop this activity, whether done through Skyscanner itself or the linked agents, unless Ryanair was provided with personal email addresses and/or phone numbers of the customers.

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Ryanair claimed, among other things, that it wanted to ensure online agents do not provide what it called “fake” email addresses for passengers.

Skyscanner opposed the injunction application. It also rejected claims of screen scraping and says it is a term meant to demonise something lawful, the compilation and use of data in the public domain.

Refusal

The High Court refused the injunction for reasons including that Ryanair’s claim of inconvenience to passengers and other prejudice was not sufficient to conclude the balance of justice favoured granting the injunction. If damages were awarded against the defendants at the main trial, this would be an adequate remedy for the alleged wrong, the court also found.

Ryanair appealed that decision to the Court of Appeal. Skyscanner opposed the appeal.

In a judgment on behalf of the three-judge court, Mr Justice Brian Murray upheld the High Court decision refusing the injunction.

He said Ryanair had not established it had a strong and clear case insofar as its claim was based on the proposition that the licence agreement between it and the defendants remains in force.

The balance of justice also favoured the refusal of the relief claimed, he said.