Navitaire Inc v Easyjet Airline Co. and BulletProof Technologies, Inc.,[1] is a decision by the England and Wales High Court of Justice (Chancery Division).
The case involved a copyright infringement claim brought by Navitaire Inc. ("Navitaire") against EasyJet Airline Company ("EasyJet") and Bulletproof Technologies, Inc. ("Bulletproof") with regards to software used to construct an airline booking (ticket reservation) system.
[5] Henry Carr QC, Mark Vanhegan and Anna Edwards-Stuart (instructed by Field Fisher Waterhouse) for the Claimants Richard Arnold QC and Brian Nicholson (instructed by Herbert Smith) for the Defendants Claimant: Navitaire Inc. ("Navitaire") developed a system called "OpenRes," which is a ticketless airline booking application used by a number of airlines.
Navitaire owns the copyright in various works that make up the source code of the OpenRes software.
Open Skies coded and developed the web interface for OpenRes, called "TakeFlight".
easyJet does not dispute the allegation that it wanted a new system that was substantially indistinguishable from OpenRes' interface.
Also, with regards to "TakeFlight" it is known that easyJet copied and modified on several occasions to fix bugs, provide for the display of promotions, etc.
There are three aspects of non-contextual copying:[10] The OpenRes system consists of a database as well as a series of programs that manipulate the data.
[11] Each interface consists of single and complex commands that were entered by the user and the relevant display screens.
easyJet made interim copies of existing OpenRes databases that they were not granted permission to do.
[14] Navitaire alleged eRes violated copyright when they replicated the overall "look and feel" of the software (i.e. "business logic"); relied on and required identical or similar commands to be entered by an operator as in the OpenRes system; copying the icons displayed in the GUI; and copying the text-based screen displays as well as other results produced by the software.
Then it is said (and this is a quite distinct allegation) that the similarity exhibited by eRes to OpenRes in the eye of the user is such that there has been 'non-textual copying' of the whole of the source code.
However, they stressed to the court that with regards to the user interface, the only question to be considered was whether a substantial part was taken since none of the code was directly copied.
In the present case, the fact easyJet didn't have access aided the court in finding no infringement.
[19] Moreover, the court took into account that the peculiar aspect of computer programs is that there are several different ways of producing a similar or identical result.
Based on Navitaire, merely copying the look and feel of a program or website does not rise to the level of infringement of copyright.
That is, using underlying ideas and principles, without copying the actual expression (source code) does not infringe on another even if the functionality is the same.
Instead, the court found that the case was more like a chef who invents pudding using a different recipe than original, but derives a similar result.
One could permute all the letters and other codes in the command names, and it would still work in the same way, and all that would be lost is a modest mnemonic advantage.
[31] Based on Article 1(2) of the Directive, these were simply ideas underlying the computer program's interfaces, providing merely "the static framework for the display of the dynamic data which it is the task of the software to produce.
easyJet managed to convince the court that as licensees they were permitted to alter and modify the program to resolve any bugs and make modifications that they were hired to do.
The court analyzed this section as making clear the important dichotomy of copyright law that ideas are not protected, but the expression is.