REVISING CANADIAN DATABASE PROTECTION: WHAT LESSONS FROM EUROPE?

Abstract

The legal treatment of collections of factual information presents problems for the law of copyright. There are three main problems for law-makers charged with revising protections : little economic analysis of existing or possible models; loss of access to data and markets due to maintaining proprietary interests; and a greater explicit acceptance of unfair competition doctrine as a result of the implementation of sui generis proprietary rights. Notwithstanding these difficulties, and a dispiriting lack of momentum towards harmonized legal treatment of databases at the international level, the protection of databases is very much on the agenda in the revision of the Canadian Copyright Act and difficult decisions will have to be taken soon . Canadian law-makers could benefit from the valuable lessons learned in the context of the European two-tiered approach to the protection of original and unoriginal databases.