Ryanair DAC v. Booking.com

Case Name: Ryanair DAC v. Booking.com

Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

Date Filed: July 18, 2025

Background: In September 2020, Ryanair sued the online travel agency Booking.com for allegedly violating the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by engaging in “screen-scraping” of data belonging to the budget airline. Ryanair argued that Booking.com was not authorized to access any part of the airline’s website, pointing to cease-and-desist letters it had sent instructing the company to stop scraping. 

Nearly four years later, a federal jury in Delaware unanimously agreed that Booking.com violated the CFAA.

The district court later overturned the jury verdict. In granting Booking.com’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, the court concluded that Ryanair did not prove at least $5,000 in losses — a prerequisite to any finding of civil liability under the CFAA. However, the court also found that the CFAA prohibits accessing information that any member of the public could obtain with a free account, after the website owner sends a cease-and-desist letter.

Ryanair appealed the district court’s decision that it didn’t prove sufficient losses to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, while Booking.com urged the appeals court to affirm the judgment on the alternative ground that it never violated the CFAA in the first place.

Our Position: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Third Circuit to hold that Booking.com’s conduct did not violate the CFAA. The brief highlights the important role of scraping in investigative journalism. 

• The district court’s interpretation of the CFAA would allow private parties to criminalize routine data journalism.

• The CFAA does not criminalize routine data journalism.

From the Brief: “The District Court’s conclusion that the CFAA prohibits accessing information that any member of the public could obtain with a free account, after the website owner sends a cease-and-desist letter, would jeopardize routine tools of data journalism, including scraping and the use of test accounts.”

Related: The Reporters Committee has filed friend-of-the court briefs in several cases involving the CFAA, including Van Buren v. United States, in which the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the scope of the law.