IP Law - Database Protection - Where Does Originality Lie?

In its much criticised judgment no 14106/1995 the First Instance Court of Athens rejected an application for interlocutory measures filed by a company for the protection of a data base it had developed in 1992 for the calculation of the objective value of real property situated in Greece, in accordance with the criteria set by the Ministry of Finance.

The application was rejected on the ground that, even though a team of experts had worked for two years elaborating 350 maps and 8 volumes of lists of prices referring to 10,000 blocks of buildings and had made autopsies in certain areas, the data base thus created was not original according to the theory of "statistical uniqueness". According to this theory, whatever according to the law of probability could not have been created by someone else , had he pursued the same objective under the same circumstances, is deemed original.