UK Royal Mail loses battle to make 192 pay for using database

Royal Mail yesterday failed in a landmark High Court case that could have allowed it to charge all address providers for use of its database. It was ordered by Mr Justice Lloyd to pay at least some of the costs of directory inquiries company 192.com, which were around pounds 500,000. Royal Mail had sued 192.com for checking its address data, which it had sourced from the electoral roll, against Royal Mail’s own directory of postally correct addresses (called the Postal Address File or PAF). It had claimed multi-million pound damages because 192.com refused to pay it pounds 150 in licence fees for every CD Rom the company produced. “This claim by Royal Mail is rather like the Oxford English Dictionary claiming rights to royalties from the Harry Potter books because JK Rowling checked her spelling in the dictionary,” said Alistair Crawford, 192’s chief executive officer. He claimed that if Royal Mail had succeeded it would have given it precedent to pursue other directory providers, such as BT, for similar fees. However, Royal Mail said the PAF was “available on a licensed basis for a fee to commercial organisations”. It said: “The introduction of new licence terms will give us the opportunity to close the loophole identified by the court today. “It would be grossly unfair to the customers who pay for the information and stick to the conditions if we did not take any action against companies which we believed were using it illegally.”