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ARTICLE · 27 JANUARY 2005

Court Judgement Reduces Protection for Databases

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A recent decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has drastically narrowed the scope of legal protection for databases in the UK and throughout Europe. This could increase the rights that third parties have to access the contents of your databases and may mean that information stored in them is no longer protected at all.

United KingdomStrategy

By Conan Chitham and Dan Morrison

A recent decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has drastically narrowed the scope of legal protection for databases in the UK and throughout Europe. This could increase the rights that third parties have to access the contents of your databases and may mean that information stored in them is no longer protected at all.

Background

Before the ruling it was considered that the very action of inputting information into a database would have been enough to secure its protection under the Database Right, created following a European Directive in 1990s.

It was believed to be an infringement to extract or utilise the whole or a substantial part of a database, or to undertake repeated, systematic extraction or utilisation of insubstantial parts of a database, where it conflicted with the interests of the owner in any way.

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