Database rights

Database rights are a form of Intellectual Property right introduced by European Union Law to those countries which follow EU Law in 1997.

In most countries databases can be protected by the law of copyright to some degree, as being a compilation, but often copyright law does not sit very well with databases, which may have been compiled automatically without human intervention (e.g. a telephone directory, which is compiled without any inventive thought from computer generated telephone company records). Although the database is still valuable, and worthy of protection from misuse many legal systems find it difficult to reconcile the such databases with the need for some novelty or 'sweat of the brow' required for the creation of a work protected by copyright.

The lawmakers of the European Union decided that in order to provide equal protection to databases within the territory they should have a unified legal protection for databases. To do this they created a sui generis right called database right. It was created by Council Directive No. 96/9/EC of 11 March 1996 (Official Journal of the European Communities No. L77, 27.3.96, page 20) on the legal protection of databases.

Database right lasts for 15 years, but can be extended if the database is updated. It prevents copying of substantial parts of a database (including frequently extraction of insubstantial parts) and in that respect is similar to copyright.

In many other respects database right is similar to copyright: it is created automatically, vests in employers, does not have to be registered and is a right against use (not a monopoly).

In the UK it was introduced as The Copyright and Related rights in Databases Regulations 1997 (SI. 3032 of 1997) and came into force on 1 January 1998.