Want to connect? Select someone below to view their profile.
Patrick WheelerPartner - Head of IP & Data Protection
Databases are becoming increasingly important and valuable assets for business. Steps should be taken to protect what you have compiled and prevent unauthorised copying and misuse.
A database can be protected in three different ways under English law:
• copyright can protect literary and artistic works including tables and compilations that form part of a database, if they are original works
• copyright can protect the structure of a database, if it is an original literary work. There must be effort spent on the selection and arrangement of the data and sufficient judgment and skill exercised in the process to make the work the author’s own intellectual creation
• the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997 (the “Regulations”) can protect the data in the database if the database is the result of substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting its contents.
What is a database?
The Regulations define a database as a “collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means.” This is a wide definition. It will cover most mailing lists, customer lists, telephone directories and other collections of information, whether they are electronic or manual paper-based systems.
A database will qualify for protection as a Database Right if there has been a “substantial investment in obtaining, verifying or presenting the contents of the database.” The investment may be financial, human or technical. However, establishing that there has been a substantial investment in the database can be a complex exercise, especially if the information was compiled haphazardly over a period of time.
Under the Regulations it’s the investment in assimilating the database that qualifies it for protection, rather than the information in the database. The contents of the database do not have to be secret or even valuable to qualify for Database Rights. As such, the Regulations offer helpful protection against wrongdoing where the contents are not classified as confidential, or where there may be doubts whether copyright exists in the content or the selection and arrangement of the data, or whether such copyright has been infringed.
How are database rights infringed?
A person infringes a Database Right if they extract or re-utilise all or a substantial part of the contents of a database without the owner’s consent. Re-utilisation means making the contents available to the public, for example, by distributing copies or putting them online.
Actions such as decompiling or reverse engineering a database in order to recreate it can also be deemed an infringement. Remedies for infringement of Database Rights broadly follow those available for copyright infringement i.e. damages, injunctions and orders for delivering up (returning) the infringing material.
How we can help you
As the summary above indicates, rights in Databases are highly technical. The best way to protect them is to look at the issue holistically and in parallel with other possible legal options, which may be contractual or based on copyright.
As a full-service Intellectual Property team, our database rights experts can help you:
• Determine what rights exist in a database and who owns them
• Maximise the protection of your rights, both legally and commercially
• Take swift, decisive action if your database has been breached and copied
• Defend you if someone else claims that you have infringed their rights in a database
Read more
