77m Ltd v Ordnance Survey Ltd

Factual and Procedural Background

The dispute concerns a start-up company, referred to as Plaintiff, which created a dataset called Matrix comprising approximately 28 million geospatially referenced residential and non-residential addresses in Great Britain. Matrix competes directly with a product from Defendant, a national mapping agency, called AddressBase, which similarly links addresses to geospatial coordinates. Plaintiff compiled Matrix by accessing and processing data from multiple sources, including publicly available datasets and datasets licensed from public bodies such as Her Majesty's Land Registry (HMLR) and Registers of Scotland (RoS), as well as commercial datasets like the Post Office Address File (PAF).

Plaintiff did not contract with Defendant for access to AddressBase data, contending it lawfully created Matrix without infringing Defendant’s intellectual property rights. Defendant alleges infringement of its database rights. Plaintiff also claims Defendant committed the tort of procuring breach of contract by inducing HMLR to cease supplying data to Plaintiff.

Other parties include the Keeper of Public Records and GeoPlace, the latter being a joint venture involved in consolidating address data. The Keeper did not participate in the proceedings.

The case involves complex issues concerning the interpretation of multiple licences granted by public bodies, the scope of Defendant’s database rights, and whether Plaintiff’s data processing and use infringed those rights. The proceedings were issued in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, with several witnesses and expert evidence called by both sides.

Legal Issues Presented

1. Whether Plaintiff’s creation and use of the Matrix dataset infringed Defendant’s database rights in the Topo database and AddressBase database.
2. The proper construction and scope of licences granted by HMLR, RoS, and others to Plaintiff, including the INSPIRE Download Terms, the A1 Match Licence, FAP service terms, and the RoS Land Values licence.
3. Whether Plaintiff’s use of data obtained under these licences exceeded permitted uses and thus constituted breach of contract and/or infringement.
4. Whether Plaintiff committed acts of scraping data from the FAP service in breach of its terms.
5. Whether Plaintiff’s use of centroids and addresses derived from Defendant’s databases amounts to acts of extraction or re-utilisation infringing Defendant’s database rights.
6. The applicability of statutory defences under the Database Regulations to Plaintiff’s use of data.
7. Whether Defendant procured a breach of contract by HMLR in ceasing data supply to Plaintiff.
8. Whether any estoppel arises from representations made to Plaintiff regarding permitted data use.

Arguments of the Parties

The opinion does not contain a detailed account of the parties' legal arguments.

Table of Precedents Cited

Court's Reasoning and Analysis

The court conducted a detailed analysis of the factual matrix, contractual terms, and applicable law. It examined the licences granted by HMLR, RoS, and others, focusing on their wording and the parties’ mutual understanding. The court interpreted the INSPIRE Download Terms as permitting Plaintiff’s internal use of the INSPIRE polygons but requiring a separate licence from Defendant for purposes beyond internal use or sublicensing the polygons themselves. The court rejected Defendant’s broader interpretation that Plaintiff’s creation of Matrix was outside the scope of the licence, finding Plaintiff’s use authorized.

Regarding the A1 Match Licence, the court found that the contract was continuous and obliged HMLR to provide matching services on a volume basis. However, it held that Plaintiff’s use of the A1 property descriptions to link addresses to geospatial data exceeded the permitted use, which was limited to cleansing non-addressable sites. Plaintiff breached this licence by using the data for a broader purpose than that disclosed to HMLR.

The court concluded that Plaintiff obtained about 3.5 million additional A1 property descriptions by automated scraping from HMLR’s Find a Property (FAP) service, which was prohibited by the FAP terms. This scraping constituted a breach of the applicable licence terms.

On the RoS Land Values licence, the court found that Plaintiff’s use of centroids derived from Defendant’s data to assign geolocations exceeded the licence’s scope, which permitted only limited internal modelling and use related to house price information services. Plaintiff’s use was unlicensed.

Turning to database rights, the court held that Plaintiff’s use of centroids and addresses constituted acts of extraction of substantial parts of Defendant’s protected databases (Topo and AddressBase/NAG). The court rejected Plaintiff’s argument that this was mere consultation, emphasizing the scale and nature of the data transfer to another medium for processing.

The court considered statutory defences under the Database Regulations Schedule 1 paragraph 3 and found that only the limited use of 480,000 manually obtained FAP addresses fell within the authorised extraction defence. Other acts, including scraping and use of centroids, were not covered by any defence.

The court rejected Plaintiff’s estoppel claims, finding no relevant representations were made to authorize the contested uses.

On the tort of procuring breach of contract, the court found that Defendant did procure HMLR to breach its contract with Plaintiff by causing HMLR to cease data supply after August/September 2015. However, Defendant only had notice of the contract terms after April 2017, so liability for procuring breach was limited to conduct after that date. Since no evidence showed inducement after that date, the procuring breach claim failed.

Holding and Implications

The court’s decision can be summarized as follows:

• Plaintiff did not breach the INSPIRE Download Terms and thus did not infringe Defendant’s database rights by use of INSPIRE polygons or data derived therefrom.
• Plaintiff breached the A1 Match Licence by using A1 property descriptions beyond the permitted scope.
• Plaintiff breached the FAP service terms by scraping approximately 3.5 million addresses.
• Plaintiff breached the RoS Land Values licence by using centroids beyond permitted internal modelling purposes.
• Plaintiff infringed Defendant’s database rights in the Topo and AddressBase/NAG databases by extracting and using substantial parts of the data without proper licence.
• Manually obtained FAP addresses (approx. 480,000) were used lawfully under the authorised extraction defence and did not infringe database rights.
• No estoppel by representation applies to Plaintiff’s actions.
• No issue of authority to grant licences arises beyond the findings on scope and breach.
• Claim for procuring breach of contract against Defendant fails due to lack of notice at relevant times.

The direct effect is that Plaintiff’s use of certain data was unlicensed and infringed Defendant’s rights, while other uses were lawful. No new legal precedents were established; the court applied existing principles of contract interpretation, database right law, and tort of procuring breach. The case clarifies the limits of public sector data licences and the application of database rights to derived geospatial datasets.