Low-cost airline Ryanair has won a case in the European Court of Justice preventing PR Aviation from screen-scraping the Irish airline's database.
The Dutch Supreme Court referred the proceedings to the EU Court asking it to take a view on whether Ryanair could prevent screen-scraping of its database by PR Aviation, which at the time ran the Wegolo price comparison site.
Legal dealings between the two companies had been rumbling on for some time with Ryanair first initiating proceedings against PR Aviation in 2008 for with various claims including that its rights under the Database Directive had been infringed.
A statement from the airline says the court supported its claims that it is entitled to include terms and conditions on its website that prevent companies from screen-scraping its database for commercial purposes.
This is the second screen-scraping victory Ryanair has won in as many weeks with the airline announcing a judgement from the Regional Court of Hamburg against eDreams last week.
eDreams was ordered to stop using the ryanair.eDreams.de subdomain as well as refrain from using the same in Google advertising. The online travel agency was also ordered to pay compensation for trademark infringement.
Ryanair has been involved in a number of cases against online travel companies across Europe and a spokesman confirmed others were ongoing.
The airline continues its battle against the machine scraping of its flight prices and availability through initiatives such as reCaptcha as well as its legal wranglings.
The spokesman also reiterated the airline's stance on the practice saying it allows 'price comparison only' sites to access pricing information for annual donation to charity of Euro 100.