 Legal Protection for the Database: Is there a better way?Bronwyn Howell, Susan Corbett and Mina Moayyed No 19214, Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation Abstract: The business database is a valuable commodity. However without adequate legal protection the economic incentives required to invest in their creation ongoing updating and maintenance will be absent. The underlying objectives of many business databases can only be achieved if they are made accessible to the public; these databases are particularly vulnerable to misuse. Although copyright law provides protection for the original structure and format of a database judicial decisions in this area reveal many inconsistencies. In addition traditional copyright law fails to address the complexity of features found in a modern database. In this article we examine decisions from the European Union the United States and Australia and conclude that traditional copyright protection for the modern database is inappropriate. We analyse the structure of the 21st century business database and explain how copyright could protect specific features of this structure in a more nuanced fashion. As an alternative we consider the use of compulsory licensing as a suitable tool for protecting the economic value of the database. Date: 2011 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vuw:vuwcsr:19214 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation ISCR, PO Box 600, Victoria University Wellington 6140, New Zealand. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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