Nieuws over Ryanair

News Release

03.03.10

Ryanair celebrates another victory against screenscrapers in Germany

Ryanair, the world’s favourite airline, today (3^rd Mar) celebrated yet another victory for consumers after the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled that the reseale of Ryanair tickets by German screenscraper website Cheaptickets was unlawful.

Today’s ruling follows a similar decision of January last which ruled that screenscraping of Ryanair.com by German website Vtours to resell Ryanair’s flights was unlawful. Today’s win is a landmark decision in Europe as the Court today recognised that Ryanair has legally protected rights and that Cheaptickets were violating Ryanair’s rights by scraping Ryanair.com for the purpose of reselling tickets.

Ryanair has taken several high profile cases against screenscrapers throughout Europe as part of its long running campaign to try to stop their anti-consumer practices. These online resellers access Ryanair’s website in breach of its Terms of Use, take its flight information and sell Ryanair tickets, with high additional charges, which are not made clear to the consumer.

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:

“Ryanair is delighted at today’s victory which is the fourth time the German courts have outlawed screenscraping. Ryanair is confident that with these strong precedents, all European courts will support Ryanair’s fight to protect consumers against overcharging screenscraping ticket-touts and outlaw the screenscraping of Ryanair’s website.

“All genuine price comparison websites can enter into a licence agreement with Ryanair to allow them to legally provide consumers with genuine price comparisons and guarantee that passengers are not subjected to additional charges. If Cheaptickets or any other unauthorised screenscraper is interested in providing an honest comparison for consumers in Germany it is welcome to sign up to this licence.”