We start to analyze each component of database’s definition and to find them in a web page so that we can compare those juridical goods. After that we analyze present legislation concern database and in particular World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treatments and European Directive 96/92/CE, which we consider as the best legislation in this field. In the end, we outline future trends that seem to appreciate and apply our theory.
TopBackground
The first institution that had issue a database protection is the European Community by the directive 96/9/CE. The course to give a protection to database was started on April 15th, 1992, when the European Commission issued a formal proposal for a Directive on the legal protection of databases, which was later amended by the Commission on October 4th, 1993. After four years of discussions and proposals in the 1996 was approved the last version and issued the directive 96/9/CE.
The EU Database Directive was created to harmonize the intellectual property laws regarding databases of the 18 countries of the European Union by supplementing copyright to protect databases produced by sweat of the brow (Boyle, 2001). The Directive creates a new kind of intellectual property protection: a sui generis right. Sui generis is a Latin expression that means that something is linked to a specific requisite for admission, in other words this particular protection is given only to the database that meet all the requirements (Autelitano, 1999). Is important to observe that the term of protection is 15 years, but each time the database is updated significantly, the entire database and not just the updated parts receives another 15 years of protection. Consequently, active databases can be protected in perpetuity.
The Database Directive has created a two-tiered approach to the database’s protection: on one hand database that by originality of selection and arrangement qualify for copyright protection under national laws will enjoy the same rights as other copyrighted works and, on the other hand, database that do not meet such requirements will, nonetheless, be protected against unfair extraction under the terms of the Directive.
The top tier provided copyright protection for original selection and arrangement of facts in the database. In other words the authorship is given when the web page has the requirement of originality of selection and arrangement and is important to observe that to have this legal protection the author doesn’t need to demonstrate his investments in term of money or time.