IDDQD and Royal Mail v Codeberry: Claim succeeds in addresses database claim

In IDDQD Ltd v Codeberry & Smith, Royal Mail Group Ltd v Codeberry & Smith [2025] EWHC 2561 (Ch) (not available on BAILII but published by 8 New Square here), the High Court has considered a claim for database right and copyright infringement in databases relating to addresses in the UK. The court found infringement, including by the individual director/owner, showing there may still be life in the practice of including individual defendants in litigation.  

Background

Every postal address in the UK has a postcode. For example, Buckingham Palace is located at SW1A 1AA. Those postcodes, combined with other address information, such as the building name or number, the road on which the property is located, and the town or city in which it is located, is found in a database called the Postcode Address File (PAF).

The PAF was created as part of a pilot scheme in Norwich, England in 1959, but was extended to cover all addresses in the 1960s and 1970s. The PAF was created by the Post Office, which eventually became Royal Mail (RMG). A further database based on the PAF was created by another company called IDDQD in 2013, called the GBR Database.

The PAF is a useful database in many fields, and is therefore rather valuable. There is an active licensing market, with 50,000 users of the database. Access is subject to a licence fee, and the terms of such a licence are required to be “reasonable”. The GBR Database has also been made available on commercial terms.

In 2014-15, Lee Smith created another database of postal addresses, called GetAddress. Mr Smith then incorporated a company called Codeberry. Royal Mail and IDDQD claimed that Get Address was created using the PAF and GBR Database, and that Codeberry and Mr Smith were therefore liable for copyright infringement and database right infringement. There is a lot of other issues that are interesting but of less wide application (mainly around the licences/rights the defendants claimed to have to do what they did, and some fairly unusual twists and turns with the defendants' lawyers), so this post focuses on the copyright, database right and the individual liability points.

Database rights

Databases are mainly protected through either copyright under s.3(1)(a) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or the sui generis database right under Directive 96/9/EC, implemented in the UK by the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997 (SI 1997/3032).

The definition of a ‘database’ is the same in both situations, i.e. it is a collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way, and individually accessible by electronic or other means.

For copyright to subsist, the selection and arrangement of the contents of the database must constitute the “author’s own intellectual creation”. For the sui generis right to subsist, there must have been a substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents of the database (but not the creation of it – British Horseracing Board Ltd v William Hill Organisation Ltd (Case C-203/02)).

Copyright subsists for 70 years from the death of the author, and the sui generis right subsists for 15 years from the date of the investment. This means that copyright can subsist for a very long time, and the sui generis right can subsist indefinitely if substantial investment continues to be made (BHB).

The PAF

The PAF is a constantly updated and evolving database. It contains around 32 million addresses, being updated with the new addresses being added to the UK’s housing and commercial stock, as well as amended with changes to addresses (circa 9-12,000 changes each week, which I make to be 1.5-2%/year). RMG claimed to have spent £27-£34 million on maintaining the PAF over the past 10 years.

The Judge accepted this, and found that the PAF was a “rolling database”, meaning it continued to be in term. No distinction was made between the addresses added in the late 20^th century from those made within the past 15 years; the investment was in the whole of the database. Similarly, no distinction was made between the addition of new addresses and the verification of them; the whole database was protected. This has, in other cases, been a major area of contention.

The GBR Database

As mentioned above, the GBR Database was built on top of the PAF Database (with permission). The work (or investment) done on top of that was primarily adding other data sources, making a more usable and searchable database, and writing software for the purpose. It is not clear from the judgment exactly what was added or done to the data within the GBR Database, but the judge accepted that it constituted investment in the right things.

Infringement

Mr Smith and Codeberry’s position on what exactly had been done to create GetAddress shifted. Ultimately, it was accepted that they had downloaded at least parts of IDDQD’s GBR Database, which contained the PAF. RMG and IDDQD had placed markers in the databases that enabled them to show that their data had been used; those markers being fake addresses in the PAF and “sleepers” in the GBR Database.

The judge accepted that the defendants had downloaded at least 5.3% of the GBR Database, and with it a substantial part of the investment in the PAF and GBR Database, and therefore a substantial part of those databases.

The defendants argued that all they had done was consult the database. ‘Mere consultation’ is not an infringing act – see BHB at [54] and Directmedia (C-304/07) at [51]. However, the judge (sensibly) held that downloading large swathes of a database in order to (at least) verify a competing database does not constitute ‘consultation’.

The judge referred to another UK case, 77m Ltd v Ordnance Survey Ltd [2019] EWHC 3007 (Ch), where the judge referred to BHB and Directmedia, and distinguished between on-screen consultation, where the putative infringer is looking at the database on a screen, and someone who transfers the database by transferring it into another medium, thereby appropriating the investment in the database. The latter is what happened in this case, and the judge found that the PAF and GBR Database had both been extracted and re-utilised.

As an interesting side note on 77m, the judge in that case referred to a human reading the contents of the database. They are, in one sense, transferring the data into another medium (their brain), but that “is not a relevant sort of medium” [277]. This distinction goes to the heart of the Generative AI conundrum, i.e. writers, artists, musicians (etc.) are permitted to read, view, listen to (etc.) copyright works without transferring them to another relevant medium, but a computer that copies them for ostensibly the same purpose, i.e. to learn from them, is not. It is a question of scale and technology.

Copyright

RMG relied on the PAF as it existed in 1996. The court found that individuals collaborated in its creation around that time, and therefore constituted a single work (comparing with Martin v Kogan [2019] EWCA Civ 1645, where the court took a more ‘draft by draft’ approach). In the end, no real challenge was mounted against the subsistence of copyright, possibly a consequence of the chaotic nature of the defendants’ conduct of the proceedings, and it was accepted.

Even though the defendants had copied the PAF at a much later date than it has been created, and significant changes had been made to it in that time, the court found that the historic PAF had indeed been copied. Despite the length of the judgment, this finding has little explanation, but having gone in detail into how the PAF was copied, the judge accepted that the copying of the historic PAF must follow. There is not much in the judgment about intellectual creation generally, so this is somewhat difficult to analyse.

Joint liability

The case of Lifestyle Equities CV v Ahmed [2024] UKSC 17, which considered the liability of directors/individuals for the acts of companies, caused some disquiet among the IP community. It contained the hitherto unknown requirement that the individual must have knowledge of the “essential facts” that make the act unlawful ([108]-[109]).

The judge in this case found that Mr Smith must have had knowledge of the “essential features of the acts of infringement” because he did them. He must therefore have procured them. Putting aside that “essential features” may not mean the same thing as “essential facts”, there was no finding that Mr Smith knowingly infringed/caused Codeberry to infringe; he only knew what he was doing.

This Kat has it on authority that the term “essential facts” was not put forward by the parties in Lifestyle Equities, but that it was suggested that a director would not be liable if he acted bona fide with reasonable care and without actual or constructive notice that the act in question will cause an infringement. On that basis, and bearing in mind the other findings about Mr Smith’s evidence, one can see why Mr Smith was found liable. This may give encouragement to claimants to plead and prosecute infringement claims against individuals.