In Football Dataco & Others v Yahoo! UK Ltd & Others, the Court of Appeal has referred to the ECJ questions on the interpretation of Directive 96/9 on the Legal Protection of Databases. Its principle question was: what is meant by “databases which, by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents constitute the author’s own intellectual creation”?

The databases in question comprised football fixture lists in the English and Scottish leagues. The defendant used these without paying the claimant (an organiser of football fixtures). The claimant contended that, by arrangement of its contents, the fixture list became its “own intellectual creation”, thereby attracting the Directive’s protection. The defendant’s stance was that these lists did not attract such protection, because they were merely the fruits of “sweat of the brow” – in other words, compilation, but not creation.

The Court of Appeal observed that the ECJ’s answers to its questions had wide implications for the legal protection not only of sports fixture lists, but possibly also of TV listings, which required comparable energy and skill to compile.