The European Court of Justice has decided to diminish the legal protection of so called 'spin-off' databases under the Database Directive 1996/9/EC. In order to claim 'sui generis' database protection, a substantial investment must be made "in seeking, collecting, verifying and presenting existing materials". The resources used to create the materials which make up the database can _not_ be counted as substantial investment. In other words; if a database is a logical spin-off of your main activity, the data cannot be protected against use by third parties. These verdicts juxtapose the opinion of the Advocate General, issued on 8 June 2004.

The parties involved in the 4 cases are the British Horseracing Board (BRB) versus William Hill and Fixtures Marketing Ltd (football fixture lists) versus football pools operators in Finland, Sweden and Greece. Advocate General Stix-Hackl found that the database rights of the plaintiffs (BRB and Fixtures Marketing) were infringed by the bookmakers.

In the case of football fixture lists the Court finds it does not require any particular effort on the part of the professional leagues to make up such a list. "Those activities are indivisibly linked to the creation of those data, in which the leagues participate directly as those responsible for the organisation of football league fixtures."

In the case of the horse races, the Court similarly acknowledges the database right of the British Horseracing Board, but finds William Hill only uses insubstantial parts, since they only use parts of the database that do not require separate substantial investments.

Press release Curia verdict in cases C-46/02, C-203/02, C-338/02 and C-444/02 (09.11.2004)
http://www.curia.eu.int/en/actu/communiques/cp04/aff/cp040089en.pdf

The British Horseracing Board v William Hill (09.11.2004)
http://curia.eu.int/jurisp/cgi-bin/gettext.pl?lang=en&num=79958890...()

EDRI-gram 2.15 'Opinion European Court of Justice: perpetual rights for databases' (04.08.2004)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number215/databases