Database Protection Research Articles

Preserving Originality in Cyberspace

Although China has long been criticized for her half-heart in copyright enforcement, she is actually one of few countries that, under international pressures and obligations, establish a basic modern copyright system in an extremely short period of time. It is undeniable that response to international pressures has increasingly become one of primary motives behind domestic copyright legislation efforts. Yet, Chinese copyright law as well as those of most modern countries is also proposed to further the other two equally, if not more, important ends: (1) to recognize and encourage intellectual creation of authors; and (2) to promote the pubic interest in progress and dissemination of science and knowledge. The awareness of these dual purposes of copyright law is particularly crucial in cyberspace, where the international community has not yet achieved a final consensus on the appropriate level of copyright protection. Taking as case study electronic database protection, this article argues that China should start to build a more balanced copyright system in cyberspace to tame new technologies into maximizing the welfare not only of individual authors but also of the society as a whole. This article points out, inter alia, a troubling tendency of overprotecting unoriginal databases and diminishing the public domain by circumventing such traditional copyright safety valves as the originality requirement. Database protection may not be classified as an entirely novel issue in cyberspace. Literally speaking, any collection of information is a “data-base”, such as yellow pages and encyclopedias which has long been existing in the printing form. Nonetheless, digital technology dramatically reactivated and exaggerated the database concern in at least two aspects: On the one hand, the use of computers makes it economically feasible to create highly comprehensive but still user-friendly databases by collecting, storing and processing a huge amount of data. On the other hand, it is also not hard to image that electronic databases are particularly vulnerable to piracy. Once they become available on the Internet, several clicks on the mouse may turn an end-user into a potential competitor. Nonetheless, what bring database protection to the front of digital copyright agenda worldwide are not only the bright economic prospects and exacerbated vulnerability of database industries in cyberspace, but also the potential effects of expansive database protection on the public interest in free flow of information. Section II will briefly survey the database protection regimes in the United States (the “U.S.”) and the European Union (the “E.U.”), which lays the comparative ground for further analysis on their Chinese counterpart. Section III will trace the history of database protection in China, with a particular emphasis on the recent trend of applying unfair competition law to protect uncopyrightable databases. Based on the U.S. and the E.U.’s successful experience, Section IV will articulate constitutional and economic implications of originality and propose how China should preserve originality in cyberspace to strike the dedicate balance between providing incentive to intellectual creation and safeguarding the public domain. Section V will conclude the main points of this article and try to invoke some further policy considerations, though beyond the scope of this article, yet entailing even more serious attention from Chinese copyright profession.

Which way to the Revolution? The Consequences of Database Protection as a New Form of Intellectual Property

In the age of information technology, the sale of information in the form of searchable databases has become a multibillion-dollar industry. In the United States, compilations of data have always presented a difficult problem: Although such works are often assembled at considerable cost and are extremely valuable to commerce and science, they do not exhibit the modicum of creativity usually required for copyrightability. In stark contrast, the European Union has set a global agenda by putting into effect a new form of intellectual property protection for databases, the terms of which could significantly affect the interests of database producers and consumers throughout the world. This article provides a summary of U.S. and international laws used to protect databases and describes the pressures that are affecting U.S. alternatives. Because both information and technology are now subject to porous international boundaries, the authors propose a change in U.S. law.

Database protection in the UK and the USA: What, if any, protection might those who work so hard receive?

This paper discusses the nature and extent of protection afforded under UK and US laws for sequence listings, with an emphasis on databases containing sequence listings.

Creating Special Literature Resource Databases in Western China Under a Digital Environment

This paper addresses the issue of special literature database resources in the creation of Chinese database groups, and it holds that the extremely rich Chinese literature resources should naturally become an indispensable part of global information resource networks. Nevertheless, the digitization foundation for Chinese literature resources, having been subject to various factors, is still very weak. Among other things, there is yet no relevant scientific awareness for guiding macro policy stipulations, and from a micro-perspective there are no complete technical solutions available for realizing the digitized project goals. The national program for Western China development currently has provided us with an opportunity to establish a paradigm. The rational development and digitization of the local literatures, rare copies of ancient Chinese manuscripts, and those cultural resources indigenous to the minority nationalities and ethnic groups in Western China, will greatly enrich Chinese digital resources on the Internet and enhance the position of the Chinese literature resource database groups on the global information resource platform.

Survey of Developments in European Database Protection

Survey of Developments in European Database Protection

Which Way to the Revolution? The Consequences of Database Protection As a New Form of Intellectual Property

Which Way to the Revolution? The Consequences of Database Protection As a New Form of Intellectual Property

Political Economies of Harmonization: Database Protection and Information Patents

Laws concerning intellectual property have been part and parcel of the international harmonization of commercial law for over a century. With the 1994 TRIPS Agreement, international standards for protecting intellectual property were firmly woven into the larger structure of global economic integration. Since then, there has been continued, rapid development of international legal norms for protecting intellectual property. This paper, however, concerns two areas of intellectual property law that have shown themselves resistant to harmonization: extra-copyright protection of databases and the broader field of information patents. With database protection, the EU moved decisively to create this kind of intellectual property in 1996; half a decade later the US has no such law and protection of databases is uncertain. With information patents,the US provides robust patent protection across the whole range of information patents, while Europe has expressly declined to embrace business method patents and patenting of software inventions remains uncertain. For each of these two areas, this paper offers descriptive lessons about the political realities of intellectual property policy; a normative account of when intellectual property policy should be changed; and, finally, an analysis of how future policy developments in these two areas of intellectual property can and should be held to that higher normative standard.

Protection and Enforcement of New Intellectual Property

The desirability of new forms of intellectual property protection for databases and domain names is beyond the scope of this Article. Instead, this Article focuses on the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in databases and domain names under existing law. Because of the increased value of these assets, owners should increasingly pay attention to their protection.

Drawing Swords After Feist: Efforts to Legislate the Database Pirate

The United States Supreme Court's 1991 ruling in Feist v. Rural Telephone, Inc., is critical to the debate over the nature of copyright protection for compilations and the use of "originality" as a constitutional requirement for copyright protection. An analysis of case law following Feist and several congressional database protection bills demonstrates some confusion about protection for compilations. The case law is limited, however, and does not indicate rampant piracy. In addition, the legislation that has been proposed does not directly address the issues raised by Feist. Lost in the debate is a complete and flexible legal test for determining when a compilation is sufficiently creative to merit protection.

Challenges for biomedical informatics and pharmacogenomics.

Pharmacogenomics requires the integration and analysis of genomic, molecular, cellular, and clinical data, and it thus offers a remarkable set of challenges to biomedical informatics. These include infrastructural challenges such as the creation of data models and databases for storing these data, the integration of these data with external databases, the extraction of information from natural language text, and the protection of databases with sensitive information. There are also scientific challenges in creating tools to support gene expression analysis, three-dimensional structural analysis, and comparative genomic analysis. In this review, we summarize the current uses of informatics within pharmacogenomics and show how the technical challenges that remain for biomedical informatics are typical of those that will be confronted in the postgenomic era.

On the complexity of optimal microaggregation for statistical disclosure control

Statistical disclosure control (SDC), also termed inference control two decades ago, is an integral part of data security dealing with the protection of statistical databases. The basic problem in SDC is to release data in a way that does not lead to disclosure of individual information (high security) but preserves the informational content as much as possible (low information loss). SDC is dual with data mining in that progress of data mining techniques forces official statistics to a continual improvement of SDC techniques: the more powerful the inferences that can be made on a released data set, the more protection is needed so that no inference jeopardizes the privacy of individual respondents’ numerical data. This paper deals with the computational complexity of optimal microaggregation, where optimal means yielding minimal information loss for a fixed security level. More specifically, we show that the problem of optimal microaggregation cannot be exactly solved in polynomial time. This result is relevant because it provides theoretical justification for the lack of exact optimal algorithms and for the current use of heuristic approaches.

Intellectual property. Europe's database experiment.

Database protection laws in Europe may have produced a modest, one-time growth spurt for commercial providers. Unfortunately, Europe's new database laws have also produced significant problems including overprotection of low-value data (e.g., telephone books), new barriers to database integration, and further erosion of the public domain. The authors of this Policy Forum caution that these problems could cripple commercial and academic science.

Electronic Agents and the Legal Protection of Non-creative Databases

One of the most important application of electronic agents in the Internet environment is their ability to automatically browse and index web sites in the context of search engines. This activity, though, may give rise to several interesting intellectual property issues. In the European Union, the Database Directive of 1996 has introduced a new form of intellectual property protection for databases which – when applied to the search engine scenario – can provide for interesting results and for new means of tackling the misappropriation of one's efforts in the digital economy.

Legal Protection of Databases: Feist v. Rural Telephone Service

The rapid development of database software and information- gathering techniques has led to a reassessment of the traditional concepts of intellectual property law. Advanced technology has changed our methods of gathering, distributing, and retrieving news, research materials, and even telephone numbers. Databases are often provided at little or no cost on the Internet in real time. They provide accurate access to telephone books, dictionary definitions, driving directions, news, sports scores, stock quotations and many sources of information from all over the world. Databases are an expanding multi-billion dollar industry in the United States.

The Quest for Legal Protection of Databases in the Digital Age

The Quest for Legal Protection of Databases in the Digital Age

Copyright and Electronic Library Resources

ABSTRACT As electronic resources represent a larger percentage of libraries' purchases and services, copyright law, licensing, and other information laws are changing some traditional library functions. This article reviews the law of electronic resources through an outline of affected library services, including acquisitions and collection development; gifts, exchanges, and sales; archiving and preservation; circulation; interli-brary loan and document delivery; reserve; and research, reference, and instructional services. Legal issues considered include copyright, licensing, and database protection.

IPR in the ensuing global digital economy

This article covers the evolution of traditional intellectual property rights (IPR) laws and associated concepts from printed to digital works, and discusses how the characteristics of digital replication pose problems for traditional IPR systems. It highlights international treaties on copyright, including the Universal Copyright Convention, the Berne Convention, the Performers and Phonograms treaty and the Sui‐Generis Protection of Databases. It provides some insight into the Indian software industry by discussing the scope of Indian copyright law, the rights of owner, infringement, penalties, and makes a comparison with US law. The article concludes that judicious participation by all countries in the development of a globalized IPR regime would strengthen the global digital economy.

Patent protection for protein structures and databases.

Patent protection is available for certain inventions in the field of structural genomics. A review of the patent application procedure is provided, and patentable aspects of protein structural information under US law are discussed. Strategic and international factors to consider when seeking patent protection for an invention also are presented.

Summary of National Research Council report on database protection

Legislative efforts are currently underway in the United States, the European Union, and the World Intellectual Property Organization to enhance greatly the legal protection of proprietary databases. At the request of several federal science agencies, the National Research Council produced a study, in 1999, that identified and evaluated several existing and proposed policy approaches for protecting the proprietary rights of private-sector database rights holders, while promoting and enhancing access to scientific and technical data for public-interest uses. This article reprints the Summary from that report and provides an introduction to the report and to the issues it addresses.

Intellectual property protection for computer software: how much and what form is effective?

Computer software legislation and judicial decisions have proved inadequate to protect computer software. Moreover, these forms of protection have failed to understand the essential nature of software. By attempting to fit computer software into ill-fitting moulds of protection, such as the Patent and Copyright Acts, international courts and governments are effectively ensuring that computer programs and databases are either over or under protected. Through an analysis of the present levels of protection afforded software by Canada, the European Union and the United States, it becomes clear that a unique form of Intellectual Protection is necessary for software and databases. At this time, Canada is offering almost no protection for computer programs and databases, whereas the United States, through judicial decisions such as that given in the State Street case, have opened the floodgates for software patent claims. Europe exemplifies a happy medium.