Ryanair has launched a legal attack on Dublin-based Budget Travel for breaching the airline’s website terms of use and intellectual property rights.

The low-cost airline has asked the court to prevent Budget Travel from ‘unauthorised screen-scraping and reselling of Ryanair seats at inflated prices to consumers’.

In a statement Ryanair says the travel agency has rejected its request to stop selling its flights and the airline goes on to list its claims against Budget Travel including flights being sold at a mark-up.

Budget Travel declined to comment but a number of flight searches made on its website for routes served by Ryanair did not yield any results for the Irish carrier.

The airline says it only allows price comparison sites to list prices in return for a charitable donation of €100 annually.

In November, eDreams and Bravofly recommenced offering Ryanair flights despite reCaptcha technology implemented by the airline in November which aimed to stop screen-scraping.

The current action is the latest in a string of legal attempts by Ryanair to prevent websites scraping its fares including its win in German courts in 2005.