IDDQD and Royal Mail Group v Codeberry [2025] EWHC 2561 (Ch)
This was a joint trial of two claims, one brought by IDDQD and a second by Royal Mail Group, against the same defendants, in relation to online address search and verification services. This is software well-known to any customer using an e-commerce website. At check-out, a customer starts to type in an address or a postcode and the software application on the website searches the address against a database of postal addresses and auto-completes or auto-populates the address fields for the customer.
IDDQD is a licensee of Royal Mail’s ‘Postcode Address File’ (PAF), which contains a list of all postcodes and addresses in the UK. IDDQD provides its online address services under the name Ideal Postcodes. Ideal Postcodes functions using a database of postal addresses called the GBR Database using the licensed PAF as the spine and includes further developments and enhancements.
The defendants operated a competing service under the name GetAddress. It comprised two elements – a piece of software and a database of UK addresses. Mr Smith, the second defendant, was a director and shareholder of the first defendant, Codeberry. For a period of time, Mr Smith was a licensee of IDDQD and, contrary to the terms of the licence, downloaded large amounts of postal address data from the GBR Database for use in the GetAddress Database.
IDDQD’s claim was for infringement of database right in the GBR Database and breach of contract. Royal Mail’s claim was for infringement of database right and copyright in the PAF which had been taken by the defendants including through downloading of data from the GBR Database (which contained PAF data) and from other various public sources which themselves included PAF data licensed by Royal Mail.
At trial, the Judge held that database right subsisted in the GBR Database and was owned by IDDQD and Royal Mail owned the database right and copyright which subsisted in the PAF. The defendants had infringed each of these rights. IDDQD also succeeded in its breach of contract claim.
Mr Smith was held primarily liable for the acts of infringement, and also jointly liable for the infringing acts of Codeberry. In addition, this was a rare case where it was held that the nature of Mr Smith’s acts reflected either involving knowing infringement or a reckless or ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude and warranted an award of additional damages.
Chris Aikens and Mitchell Beebe appeared for IDDQD