Proposals to Regulate the Public's Rights to use Information stored in "Databases" (broadly defined)

This is a very important and troubling proposal that is before the U.S. Congress and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Union for the Public Domain is working to organize opposition to the treaty and the legislative proposal. Many of the criticisms about the treaty and the legislation focus on the very broad definitions of a database, and the extraordinarily strong forms of ownership given to facts and other materials now in the public domain.

There is a mailing list, called DB-ACTION to discuss the database protection proposals. To subscribe, send a note to listproc@essential.org, with the one line message stating:

sub db-action jane doe
(substitute your own name for jane doe)

Through November 22, 1996, The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) accepted public comments on the pending WIPO treaties on Internet copyright and database extraction rights. This is the full text of Federal Register notice, on the Request for Comments on the Chairman's Text of the Diplomatic Conference on Certain Copyright and Neighboring Rights Questions, To Be Held in Geneva From December 2 to 20, 1996. We will be trying to post some of the many comments that were received by PTO on the treaty.

Comments of Stakeholders on the Database Extraction Rights Proposal

• November 25, 1996 Letter to Vice President Gore from the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) opposing the WIPO treaty
• November 25, 1996 National Writers Union calls for delay in approval of WIPO treaty
• November 22, 1996 Comments of the U.S. Government Printing Office on the WIPO Database Treaty
• November 22, 1996 Comments of the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the WIPO proposals
• November 22, 1996 Letter from the Association for Computing on the WIPO database proposal
• November 22, 1996 Letter from Stats, Inc. on the WIPO Treaty. Stats, Inc. is a major publisher of sports statistics. (see also CPT's Web Page on Intellectual Property and Sports Statistics)
• November 22, 1996 Letter from Dun and Bradstreet on the proposed database protection treaty
• November 22, 1996 Letter from Bloomberg L.P. on the WIPO proposed database treaty
• November 21, 1996 letter by Software Developers in Opposition to WIPO Database Treaty. Very thoughtful discussion of impact of the database treaty on Internet routing infrastructure, domain names, and searching services.
• November 18, 1996. Federal Networking Advisory Council's Advisory Committee Resolution on WIPO - Proposed Database Treaty.
• November 18, 1996 memo by Alan Sugarman, Database Protection -- Tilting the Copyright Balance - II. Alan is the owner of Hyperlaw, a U.S. legal publisher.
• November 10, 1996. James Love "Government Proposes New Regulation of Sports Statistics and other "facts," First published in INFO-POLICY-NOTES. (see also CPT's Web Page on Intellectual Property and Sports Statistics)
• November 7, 1996 Letter from five national library organizations in opposition to the database treaty.
• November 7, 1996 Letter from the Library of Congress on the three WIPO treaties
• October 29, 1996, James Love "A Primer On The Proposed WIPO Treaty On Database Extraction Rights That Will Be Considered In December 1996 First published in Info-Policy-Notes.
• October 9, 1996 letter in opposition to the database treaty from the presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
• Information Industry Association (IIA): Industry Perspectives on Database Protection. IIA says it is the main trade association pushing for the treaty.
• Undated Analysis of the database treaty by Aslib (The Association for Information Management), a British organization

Satements by Academics on the WIPO database extraction propoposal

• Pamela Samuelson: Legally Speaking: Legal Protections for Database Contents, forthcoming in 39 Communications of the ACM (November, 1996)
  
• J.H. Reichman and Pamela Samuelson: Intellectual Property Rights in Data: An Assault on the Worldwide Public Interest in Research and Development (Draft), forthcoming in 50 Vanderbilt Law Review (January, 1997)
• August 28, 1996. Peter Jaszi, "Some Public Interest Considerations Relating to H.R. 3531 Database Investment and Intellectual Property Antipiracy Act of 1996", first published in the August edition of the Association of Research Libraries Federal Relations E-News.

Text of Relevant Treaties, Legislative Proposals, and Directives

• WIPO's Basic Proposal for Substantive Provisions of the Treaty on Intellectual Property in Respect of Databases, (August 30, 1996)
• Database Investment and Intellectual Property Antipiracy act of 1996 (H.R.3531). This is the implementing legislation for the treaty that was submitted to the last Congress. It contains no fair use rights for data stored in databases.
• Directive of the European Union, which has yet to be implemented

Other Web Pages on Database Protection

• Stanford University's Database Protection Web page.
• Hyperlaw's Database Protection Proposal Web page.

Union for the Public Domain's Copyright Page.

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