The original judgement in February was the first in a UK court
on the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations of 1997. The
court looked at how a web site could amount to a database under the
Regulations which were based on a European Directive. The referral
to the European Court will question its findings.
Traditional copyright laws, generally associated with works of
artistic merit, are unsuited to databases, despite the fact that a
lot of time, effort and skill may be invested in compiling a
database. The Directive and Regulations were introduced to give
special protection to databases.
The dispute concerned the repeated use by William Hill of parts
of the Horseracing Board’s database which provided pre-race
information. The Horseracing Board made its database information
available to a third party by means of a raw data feed. The third
party forwarded the raw data feed to William Hill. The Horseracing
Board successfully challenged William Hill’s use of the information
on its web site, basing its argument on the database rules. William
Hill failed in its argument that the information was already
available to the public in The Racing Post and other publications
licensed by the Horseracing Board.
William Hill appealed the decision and the accompanying
injunction against its use of the database information. Among other
things, it argued that the judge in the original case had
interpreted the EU’s Database Directive, the source of the UK
Regulations, incorrectly. William Hill said that the judge had
given too wide a meaning to the database right and what it
protected. It argued that:
"information which might have been thought
to have entered the public domain and to be freely usable could
prove to be derived from a database the right in which was
protected even though the user was unaware of that ultimate source
and right. Other national courts had adopted narrower approaches to
database right and there had so far been no European Court of
Justice ruling on the interpretation of the Database
Directive."
William Hill went on to say that the relevant provisions of the
Database Directive were not set out clearly and that the matter
should be referred to the European Court of Justice for
clarification.
The Court of Appeals agreed that the matter should be referred
to Europe for clarification, reasoning that “the points made were
of wide importance” and that domestic courts could not resolve the
issues with complete confidence.
The Court of Appeals called upon Counsel for both William Hill
and the Horseracing Board to co-operate and decide upon the
questions to be referred. William Hill has already suggested asking
the European Court whether “extraction” or “re-utilisation” under
the database rules involves having access to the original database
or a copy of it. It also wants the European Court to determine,
where there is a constantly updated database, whether there is a
new database separate from the previous database whenever any
substantial change occurs.
