Ryanair, the world’s favourite airline, today (22nd Jan 10) celebrated a further victory for consumers after the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled that ‘screenscraping’ to resell Ryanair’s flights is unlawful and banned a German website, Vtours, from screenscraping Ryanair’s website.
Yesterday’s ruling against Vtours cements the decision handed down in Hamburg last May, which ruled that the scraping of Ryanair.com to resell Ryanair tickets is unlawful. Vtours is now permanently banned from reselling Ryanair flights to consumers.
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 to consumers, with high additional charges, which are not made clear to the consumer.
Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:
“Ryanair celebrates today’s victory for German consumers as it once again confirms that European courts support Ryanair’s fight to protect consumers against overcharging screenscraping ticket-touts. Ryanair will continue its fight against screenscrapers in the interests of passengers until this practice of misleading consumers has been outlawed across Europe. Today’s result is a milestone achievement in that fight.
“All 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 Vtours is interested in genuinely providing an honest comparison for consumers in Germany it is welcome to sign up to this licence”.
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