News

Thursday, July 19, 2007
Race data of racing authority cannot be copied, says French Court

According to a ruling by a French Court this week, the producer of a database with race data has the right to prohibit others to extract data for commercial use.

The case was brought forward by the French pari-mutuel organisation PMU, whose data was scraped from their website by an information website that resold the information, allegedly also to an online, off-shore bookmaker.

According to the Court, the creator of the racing database makes an investment and undertakes an economic risk. The data is sold by PMU to different economic operators and therefore represents a value. The extradition and re-use of parts of the PMU database without authorisation is therefore a breach of rights and a violation of French intellectual property law.