Official Journal of the European Union

C 289/8

(Case C-762/19) (*)

(Reference for a preliminary ruling - Legal protection of databases - Directive 96/9/EC - Article 7 - Sui generis right of makers of databases - Prohibition on any third party to ‘extract’ or ‘re-utilise’, without the maker’s permission, the whole or a substantial part of the contents of the database - Database freely accessible on the internet - Meta search engine specialising in job advertisement searches - Extraction and/or re-utilisation of the contents of a database - Risk to the substantial investment in the obtaining, verification or presentation of the content of a database)

(2021/C 289/10)

Language of the case: Latvian

Referring court

Parties to the main proceedings

Applicant: ‘CV-Online Latvia’ SIA

Defendant: ‘Melons’ SIA

Operative part of the judgment

Article 7(1) and (2) of Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases must be interpreted as meaning that an internet search engine specialising in searching the contents of databases, which copies and indexes the whole or a substantial part of a database freely accessible on the internet and then allows its users to search that database on its own website according to criteria relevant to its content, is ‘extracting’ and ‘re-utilising’ that content within the meaning of that provision, which may be prohibited by the maker of such a database where those acts adversely affect its investment in the obtaining, verification or presentation of that content, namely that they constitute a risk to the possibility of redeeming that investment through the normal operation of the database in question, which it is for the referring court to verify.

(*) Language of the case: Latvian.