Database rights were created by Directive 96/9/EC (the Database Directive), with the aim of encouraging and protecting the investment in databases. A database is defined in the legislation as “a collection of independent works, data or other materials which are arranged in a systematic or methodical way and are individually accessible by electronic or other means”, and qualifies for protection if there has been a “substantial investment” in obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents of the database. Broadly speaking, a person infringes the database right if they extract or re-utilise all or a substantial part of the contents of a protected database without the consent of the owner.
On 22 November 2016, the Court of Appeal of Amsterdam decided the case Pearson v. Bär Software (the judgment is only available in Dutch). The judgment seems remarkable in light of the CJEU’s earlier ruling in the Ryanair case. How do they compare? The Pearson case The Pearson v. Bär Software case considered a collection…
Following a referendum on 23 June 2016, 51.9% of UK voters said “yes” to Brexit. British Prime Minister Theresa May revealed earlier this month that Article 50 TEU will be triggered by March 2017, marking the beginning of the formal withdrawal process. It is hard to predict the impact of Brexit on the current copyright…
By Jeremy Blum and Sarah Watson, Bristows Ultrasoft Technologies Limited v Hubcreate Limited [2016] EWHC 544 (IPEC) On 16th February 2016 the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (Hacon HHJ) handed down judgment in the copyright and database right dispute between software competitors Ultrasoft and Hubcreate. The case does not cite a single other judgment regarding the…
In response to a reference from the Bundesgerichtshof (Germany), the CJEU ruled that geographical information extracted from a topographic map by a third party in order to produce and market another map retains, following its extraction, sufficient informative value to be classified as ‘independent materials’ of a ‘database’ within the meaning of Article 1(2) of…
On October 29th 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its judgment in the case C‑490/14, Freistaat Bayern v Verlag Esterbauer GmbH. The Court was called upon to clarify the definition of “database” in Directive 96/9 on the legal protection of databases. It is noteworthy that the Database Directive, one of the…
…and they show overwhelming support for the introduction of a mandatory copyright exception for text and data mining for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Back in September, we launched a blog poll on the potential introduction of a mandatory text and data mining exception. We asked our blog readers their views on the following statements:…
In the September 3rd edition of Science∣Business, Julia Reda, German Pirate Party member of the European Parliament (MEP) sitting on the EP Justice Committee, was said to be confident that a mandatory text and data mining (TDM) deal could be introduced for researchers. This should come as music to the ears of the members of…
The time at which extraction from an electronic database takes place is the time at which the materials being extracted are placed on a medium other than that of the original database, independently of whether they are placed there permanently or temporarily (Case 545/07, Apis Hristovih EOOD v. Lakorda AD, paragraph 45). The time of…
The CJEU’s interpretative work on copyright law issues launched in 2015 with the decision of 15 January in the case of Ryanair Ltd v PR Aviation BV (Case C‑30/14). The Ryanair ruling is the latest stone added to the complex edifice of legal protection of databases in Europe. PR Aviation operates a website which allows…
“The activity of the operator of a dedicated meta search engine (…) comes close to the manufacture of a parasitical competing product.” Christmas somewhat overshadowed the publication of a particularly interesting CJEU decision: case C-202/12 (Innoweb), dealing with the legal protection of databases in relation to meta search engines. The judgment was published on 19…
