EU

Article 7(5) of Directive (EC) 96/9 had to be interpreted as meaning that an operator who made available on the Internet a dedicated meta search engine such as that at issue in the main proceedings re-utilised the whole or a substantial part of the contents of a database protected under Art 7 of the Directive, where that dedicated meta engine: (i) provided the end user with a search form which essentially offered the same range of functionality as the search form on the database site; (ii) translated queries from end users into the search engine for the database site in real time, so that all the information on that database was searched through; and (iii) presented the results to the end user using the format of its website, grouping duplications together into a single block item but in an order that reflected criteria comparable to those used by the search engine of the database site concerned for presenting results.