The Electronic Frontier Foundation has come out in support of Booking.com in its legal battle against Ryanair over competition concerns.Ryanair’s original lawsuit, filed in 2020, claimed Booking.com engaged in unauthorised screen-scraping of its flight data.
A jury awarded Ryanair a minimal amount of $5,000, while the district court judge later overturned the ruling on grounds of insufficient evidence of economic harm. The lobby group argues that the CFAA could be misused by companies to suppress competition across various industries.
Ryanair has appealed the district court’s decision, insinuating it undermines the jury’s findings regarding the economic impact of Booking.com’s actions.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation shared, “Inhibiting competition is precisely what Ryanair sought to do here. The court impermissibly usurped the role of the jury as the ultimate finder of fact when it found that no reasonable jury could conclude that Ryanair’s costs due to Booking’s conduct from March 1, 2022, to February 28, 2023 would have exceeded $5,000. If unauthorised access can be predicated on a violation of a website owner’s stated preferences, rather than hacking technological barriers, then companies will continue to use the CFAA to fend off competition.”
