Use of meta search engine for data scraping infringes EU database right, decides CJEU

In a judgment released on 19th December 2013, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) decided that the scraping of data from a website's database could constitute an infringement of the sui generis right in the database (article 7 of EU Database directive) if it: -        provided the end user with a search form which essentially offered the same range of functionality as the search form on the database site;-        ‘translated' queries from end users into the search engine for the database site ‘in real time', so that all the information on that database is searched through; and-        presented the results to the end user using the format of its website in the same way as in the targeted database site The case (C-202/12, Innoweb v. Wegener) involved  Innoweb BV's activities through its web search engine carried out on third party websites and in particular on  Wegener's website, where a collection of car sales advertisements (‘car ads') was displayed.