The High Court has ordered German travel company Unister GmbH to disclose contact details for the third-party provider it said accessed Ryanair’s website and supplied flight information. The order resolves Ryanair’s disclosure application; the court did not decide the pending challenge to its jurisdiction over the wider case.
Ryanair sought the provider’s name, registered or business address, place of business, email address, telephone and fax numbers, and other contact details. It said the information was needed so it could seek to join the provider to the proceedings. The provider was identified in German court documents as Ytsilon.netAG.
Ryanair alleges that the defendants’ use of information from its websites breaches its terms of use and its database, copyright and trademark rights, and amounts to passing off. Those are claims in the wider proceedings, not findings made in this disclosure judgment.
Unister says it operates an online travel portal and acts as an agent and technology provider for consumers. In the Irish proceedings it maintained that a third party, rather than Unister, accessed Ryanair’s sites. It had challenged the Irish court’s jurisdiction under the Brussels I Regulation, and that application remained undecided when the disclosure issue was heard.
The judgment describes Unister’s position in separate German proceedings: it had disclosed a contractual relationship with Ytsilon.netAG, which it said provides an electronic interface used to query and book flights. The Irish court noted that Unister said it passed customer flight data to the provider and received matching flight information in return.
Justice Paul Gilligan found a prima facie demonstration of wrongful activity in the use of Ryanair’s websites. He also considered that Unister’s refusal to identify the provider in Ireland, after disclosing its identity in the German proceedings, had the potential to create an injustice. He granted Ryanair’s application for the specified identifying and contact information.
The ruling does not determine whether Ryanair’s substantive allegations are proved, whether Unister or the provider acted wrongfully, or whether the Irish courts have jurisdiction over the substantive action. The judgment records that the jurisdiction issue remained open both in Ireland and in the German proceedings.