BGH I ZR 224/12
The German Federal Court tried a case in which one travel website's software would take concrete flight and pricing information from the websites of various airlines and offer those flights for purchase including an additional service fee to the internet user on the travel website. This practice is also called Screen Scraping. One airline claimed that such practice would violate its competition rights because it wanted to sell only directly to travellers and therefore had inserted in its website terms and conditions the prohibition of Screen Scraping.
The Court held that the screen scraping in this case did not circumvent technical measures put in place by the airline's website but merely violated its website terms and conditions which it did not find sufficient to constitute a violation of competition law. The intention and practice of the travel website to provide to travellers an overview of the available flights and prices of various airlines would also support competition and not restrict it. The airlines interest of selling only directly to travellers would not prevail over the travel websites interest under competition law.
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