Clearing the legal barriers – Danish court upholds ‘deep linking’ in Home v. Ofir

The issue of deep linking in Denmark has hopefully been put to rest in the recent landmark decision by the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court which has ruled that deep linking, systematic crawling and indexing by portal site Ofir of real estate agent Home's database are legal and do not violate either Danish Copyright law or the Marketing Act. The court also said that the use of search engines which make available deep links, allows the user to access the required information in an effective manner. Furthermore, search engines are desirable for the functioning of the Internet of today. The decision, which went against the prior ruling in the Newsbooster case, signalled the court's changing attitude towards deep linking and will have serious profound implications for news links.