Ordnance Survey Ireland has secured a £200,000 sterling (#320,770) settlement from AA Ireland after the motorists' association copied its maps. The settlement is the largest secured by the office.
The director of Ordnance Survey Ireland, Mr Dick Kirwan, said the office detected the copyright infringements by "fingerprinting" its maps and by using "particular ways to depict generalised information".
The office could thus prove that Ordnance Survey Ireland maps had been used by AA Ireland in town plans, atlases and road maps it published.
The settlement related to copyright breaches in the 1992-97 period. A licensing agreement had applied since then, Mr Kirwan said. "They have admitted infringement," he said of AA Ireland. "It's the first one we've seriously contested . . . It's an area that we're obviously now paying a lot more attention to than we did in the past."
AA Ireland's spokesman, Mr Conor Faughnan, said there had been some "outstanding issues" between the association and Ordnance Survey Ireland. "They haven't interfered with an amicable working relationship."
Though Mr Kirwan described other settlements secured by Ordnance Survey Ireland as "very small", it stands to receive another payment when a case related to copyright breaches of its Northern Ireland maps is resolved.
In partnership with the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland, the office secured an injunction at the High Court in London banning further infringements of copyright by the AA on maps of Northern Ireland produced by both.
Mr Kirwan said the organisations were still discussing the terms of a settlement on that action.
Such a settlement - and the AA Ireland payment - will be very small compared with a deal secured by Britain's Ordnance Survey on March 5th.
The AA paid £20 million sterling to that office in an out-of-court settlement that ended a long dispute over 500 AA maps, atlases and town plans published since 1990.
Similar fingerprinting technology was used in that case to prove copyright breaches.
Mr Kirwan said Ordnance Survey Ireland did not issue a writ against AA Ireland.
That had been an option, he said, but talks on a settlement were concluded last Friday.
