services. In pursuit of this end, OTB alleges that Ryanair has not only engaged in multiple litigation against online travel agents and their service providers, but adopted a multi-faceted course of conduct aimed at preventing such competition. This is said to include making false and disparaging claims about online travel agents, including OTB; attempting to prevent OTB from completing bookings on behalf of its customers; refusing to allow OTB customers to check in online, or requiring them to undergo a verifcation process which makes it difcult for OTB to perform its services for them; and withholding refunds from OTB customers. Ryanair, on the other hand, asserts that as a low-fare airline its business model is based on being able to sell its fights directly to customers, thereby maximising its opportunities to sell ancillary products to them. It therefore predominantly advertises, markets and sells its fights to customers via its own website and not through travel agents or other online platforms. Online travel agents such as OTB obtain data regarding Ryanair fights by screen-scraping Ryanair's website in order 4 to display Ryanair's fight information on their own websites. OTB is one of a number of online travel agents which do this, and has been doing it for ten years. Ryanair contends that this practice has caused wide-ranging difculties both reputationally and economically. In the words of chief executive Michael O’Leary: “They are a real pain in the arse, these OTAs, disrupting our communications with customers.” First, due in large part to the fact that agents such as OTB do not provide Ryanair with the personal e-mail address of the customer but Screen-scraping is the practice of using software to interact with a website to extract 4 information from it such as price, flight and timetable information.
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