Internet travel giant Booking.com is pushing a US court to reverse verdicts in a high-profile case centered on the screen-scraping of fares from Ryanair’s website.
Booking.com has claimed that a trial in Delaware last month was “reduced to a dispute” between two European companies and should not have been heard in the United States.
Booking.com has said if the Delaware court does not grant judgment in its favour against Ryanair, that alternatively, a new trial should take place. Ryanair has said it intends to apply for a permanent injunction preventing Booking.com from continuing to seek a judgment in its favour.
Ryanair launched its US lawsuit in 2020 against Booking Holdings and its subsidiaries including Booking.com, Priceline.com and Agoda.
The airline, headed by group chief executive Michael O’Leary, accused Booking Holdings of screen-scraping its fares.
Screen-scraping involves a third party accessing an airline’s website and often offering that airline’s fares to its own customers via its own website.
Following a trial last month, a jury found that Booking.com had caused economic harm to Ryanair and induced content platform Etuavle to access Ryanair’s website without authorisation.
All the counterclaims by Booking.com against Ryanair – which included allegations of unfair competition and defamation – failed.
Booking.com said at the time that it intended to appeal the verdict.
The only charge that Booking.com was cleared of by the jury was of conspiring with Etuavle to intentionally access the “MyRyanair” part of Ryanair’s website, in violation of the US Computer Fraud Abuse Act (CFAA).
Booking.com has moved to persuade the court to rule in its favour on two counts for which it was found guilty.
The firm has argued that Ryanair failed to make the case and that the trial should not have been held in the United States.
“At trial, Ryanair presented no evidence connecting this dispute to the United States,” lawyers for Booking.com have argued.
“Thus, even assuming the CFAA applies to some foreign conduct, it does not apply extraterritorially here.”
Booking.com’s legal team has also argued that Ryanair failed to show a “loss” of $5,000 (€4,570) or more in one year that is a required hurdle to taking a civil action under the CFAA.
It has told the court that Ryanair’s trial evidence showed it had at most a $2,457 loss attributable to Booking.com being on the hosting of the airline’s website security program.
However, the jury awarded Ryanair $5,000 in economic damages. “No reasonable jury could have reached this award based on the evidence,” Booking.com has claimed.
“Because Ryanair failed to meet the statutory loss requirement, judgment should be entered for Booking.com,” it added.
The internet travel firm has also claimed that Ryanair “failed to show fraud” committed against it.
Lawyers for Booking.com have stated that a court “has the discretion to order a new trial when the verdict is contrary to the evidence, a miscarriage of justice would result if the jury’s verdict were left to stand, or the court believes the verdict resulted from confusion.”
