On 6 August 2010 19:42, 80n <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> > >> > What's the criteria in the EU? Do you know? >> > >> >> "own intellectual creation" >> >> Article 3(1) of 96/9/EC: >> >> "1. In accordance with this Directive, databases which, by reason of >> the selection or arrangement of their contents, constitute the >> author's own intellectual creation shall be protected as such by >> copyright. No other criteria shall be applied to determine their >> eligibility for that protection." >> > I was actually asking about the criteria for traditional copyright not > database rights. However the reference above is interesting in that it
That is the criterion for traditional copyright and not database rights. The Database Directive actually did two things: (1) it harmonised the threshold criterion for *copyright* in databases (see above) (2) it created a new "database right", the threshold for which you will find in article 7(1): "1. Member States shall provide for a right for the maker of a database which shows that there has been qualitatively and/or quantitatively a substantial investment in either the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents to prevent extraction and/or re-utilization of the whole or of a substantial part, evaluated qualitatively and/or quantitatively, of the contents of that database." In other words there has to be "substantial investment" in one of: (i) obtaining; (ii) verification or (iii) presentation, where that substantial investment could be quantitative or qualitative. > asserts that selection and arrangement is required to earn a database > right. Is that a correct interpretation of what that says? Would a dump of > a list of facts with no selection or arrangement (for example a list of > names of all elected Members of Parliament) be protected by database rights? > It *could* do, but whether it did or not would depend on whether there had been the relevant substantial investment. In other words you cannot ask of a database whether or not it could be the subject of the database right, without also knowing something more about how it was created. If the UK Parliament tried to assert a database right over its list of MPs then such a claim might well fail (since it has that list anyway) whereas a carefully checked list generated by someone else (eg by My Society) might be different. The "Fixtures Marketing" cases being particularly relevant: http://www.out-law.com/page-5055 -- Francis Davey _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
