Bookmaker loses first UK decision on database rights

The Board, which is the governing authority for horseracing in Great Britain, obtained a ruling that publication by William Hill on its betting website of lists of runners in forthcoming horseraces without consent infringed the Board’s database right.

The case is the first to reach a verdict in a UK court in which the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997 have been invoked. The Regulations protect data or other materials arranged in a manner that involved “substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents.” Basically, in Europe, if a database is used by someone else without permission, the owner probably has grounds for legal action against that person.

The Board’s database of racing information includes data concerning horses, their owners, trainers, jockeys and other information relevant to the racing industry in the UK.

The principal findings of the trial Judge, Mr Justice Laddie, were as follows:

• BHB had invested significant time and money not only in compiling but in verifying and presenting the data comprising the Board’s database and the Judge declared that the database right subsisted in the database and that William Hill is not entitled to use data extracted from the database for the purposes of its on-line betting sites;
• The publication of this data on William Hill's web sites amounts to "re-utilisation" within the meaning of the Regulations even though the information was already available to the public in licensed publications such as The Racing Post; and
• The lists of runners published on William Hill's web sites constitute, by themselves, a substantial part of the database having regard to the importance of this information to those interested in horse racing.

The Board was represented by law firm Theodore Goddard who instructed barristers Peter Prescott QC and Lindsay Lane.