Rome: 13 February 2009

Rome was the host to the ePSIplus Italian national meeting on the re-use of public sector information on the 13 February 2009. The meeting is the last in a series of ePSIplus national meetings held across Europe over the past 30 months. The Italian meeting considered the best practices (Piemont Region) and the worst practices (Agenzia del Territorio) within Italy and the possibility that the Government might review the Italian transposition of the PSI Directive 2003/98/EC in the near future.

The meeting heard about the case of Associazione Consulenti di Informazioni Finanziario-Immobiliari (ACIF) versus the Agenzia del Territorio (The Land Registry). Agenzia del Territorio had launched its own value added service based on cadastral data and at the same time increased the financial charges for re-use by 600%. As a consequence the number of people employed within the existing private sector companies fell by 28% as well as a significant fall in their revenues. The Court found in the favour of the re-users as a result of Agenzia del Territorio unfair competition practices. The first reimbursement to the re-users was reported at the meeting to be in the region of €10 million with the total reimbursement due to re-users for compensation for the lost profit in the region of €30 million. A transcript of the Court hearing has been published by the Università degli Studi di Perugia.