CJEU gives guidance on database jurisdiction in Sportradar ruling

Managing IP is part of Legal Benchmarking Limited, 1-2 Paris Gardens, London, SE1 8ND

Copyright © Legal Benchmarking Limited and its affiliated companies 2025

Accessibility | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Modern Slavery Statement

CJEU gives guidance on database jurisdiction in Sportradar ruling

Football Dataco, the commercial entity that exploits rights associated with English football matches, has won an important decision in its latest battle in the European courts

But today’s ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU leaves open many questions about the protection of copyright in the EU.

The dispute arose in the UK, where Football Dataco owns a database called Football Live, which includes information such as goals and goalscorers, yellow and red cards, penalties and substitutions. It claims to spend about £600,000 a season collating the data.

Sportradar, a Germany company, provides a similar service called Sport Live Data on its website betradar.com and provides data to sports betting companies.

In the dispute before the UK courts, Football Dataco claimed that Sportradar infringed its sui generis database rights.

But the case raised a question about jurisdiction, as Sportradar’s data was hosted on a server in Austria. The England & Wales Court of Appeal therefore asked the CJEU to rule whether, if a party sends data from a server in EU member state A (eg Austria) to a user’s computer in member state B (eg, the UK), does that constitute an act of “extraction” or “re-utilisation” in either or both states?

Today, the Court answered that such an does constitute an act of re-utilisation and that the act takes place in member state B “where there is evidence from which it may be concluded that the act discloses an intention on the part of the person performing the act to target members of the public in Member State B”.

It is for the national court to assess, but the CJEU noted that in this case Sportradar’s data concerned English football matches, was supplied to English betting companies, and was available in the English language.

“Where such evidence is present, the referring court will be entitled to consider that an act of re-utilisation such as those at issue in the main proceedings is located in the territory of the Member State of location of the user to whose computer the data in question is transmitted, at his request, for purposes of storage and display on screen (Member State B),” said the Court.

The opinion will be good news for Football Dataco (which has suffered mixed fortunes in recent cases at the CJEU), and may also be useful for owners of databases and indeed other copyright-protected works.

But early analysis on twitter suggested that its broader impact might be limited.

Adam Rendle of Taylor Wessing pointed out that “intention to target” may not always be so easy to show as in this case, which involved English football matches. He suggested it could be shown by the language, currency and payment method available: “Also domain name, keyword advertising, content of website, international dialing codes, named countries etc...”

Gareth Dickson called the opinion “a timid judgment” that avoids answering the bigger questions about member state A and the Donner ruling: “Court of Appeal asked which of 3 mutually exclusive conclusions applied; the CJEU said "at least" 1 did. Is 17(b)(iii) right? CJEU avoids it.”

more from across site and SHARED ros bottom lb

More from across our site

Deborah Kirk discusses why IP and technology have become central pillars in transactions and explains why clients need practically minded lawyers
IP STARS, Managing IP’s accreditation title, reveals its latest rankings for patent work, including which firms are moving up
Leaders at US law firms explain what attorneys can learn from AI cases involving Meta and Anthropic, and why the outcomes could guide litigation strategies
Attorneys reveal the trademark and copyright trends they’ve noticed within the first half of 2025
Senior leaders at TE Connectivity and Clarivate explain how they see the future of innovation
A new action filed by Nokia against Asus and a landmark ruling on counterfeits by South Africa’s Supreme Court were also among the top talking points
Counsel explain how they’re navigating patent prosecution matters and highlight key takeaways from Federal Circuit cases
A partner who joined Fenwick alongside two others explains what drew her to the firm and her hopes for growth in Boston
The England and Wales High Court has granted Kirkland & Ellis client Samsung interim declaratory relief in its ongoing FRAND dispute with ZTE
A UDRP decision that found in favour of a small business in a domain name dispute could encourage more businesses to take a stand in ‘David v Goliath’ cases
Gift this article