Database Protection in a Global Economy

In 1996, a database treaty that the European Commission had put forward, in connection with the WIPO negotiations on transmissions in cyberspace, ultimately failed to win the support of other regional groups. Since then, the inability of the United States Congress to enact any form of database legislation has stymied further multilateral undertakings on this topic. This impasse may soon be broken, however, owing to the change of Administrations and to the appointment of new committee chairmen in the United States House of Representatives. This article will discuss the prospects for an international regulatory framework for non copyrightable databases in the light of recent developments in the United States. Part 2 will locate the database problem within the larger context of international intellectual property protection, and it will demonstrate why the European Commission’s 1996 Directive on the legal protection of databases represented a radical departure from basic tenets of the classical intellectual property system handed down from the nineteenth century. Part 3 will compare the existing E.U. model of database protection with the two proposed models currently under consideration in the United States, from which any compromise formula is likely to be drawn. It ends with some reflections on the deeper legal and economic implications of these proposals. Part 4 will then explore the implications for the international intellectual property system likely to arise if the U.S. adopts a model of database protection that differs significantly from that of the E.U. It proposes an umbrella treaty to bridge the gap between high and low protectionist models. While a low protectionist outcome in the United States is by no means certain at the time of writing, a careful consideration of ways and means to reduce friction between countries that opt to provide different levels of protection in the global marketplace seems merited at the present juncture

Database Protection Legislation Introduced in Congress

On October 8, 2003, the ongoing debate over the need for database protection returned to the floors of Congress with the introduction House Bill 3261, the Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act. The Act would impose substantial civil penalties to anyone who makes available “in commerce” a “quantitatively substantial” part of an existing database or information collection. While the legislation remains controversial, with both critics and proponents arguing about various elements, the U.S. Copyright Office is on record favoring database protection legislation in principal, and this bill is described as “major step” toward the “balanced legislation the (Copyright) Office has long recommended.” Work is expected to continue on the bill well into next year. If the bill passes in the House, it must still be approved in the Senate

Optimal Quantization of TV White Space Regions for a Broadcast Based Geolocation Database

In the current paradigm, TV white space databases communicate the available channels over a reliable Internet connection to the secondary devices. For places where an Internet connection is not available, such as in developing countries, a broadcast based geolocation database can be considered. This geolocation database will broadcast the TV white space (or the primary services protection regions) on rate-constrained digital channel. In this work, the quantization or digital representation of protection regions is considered for rate-constrained broadcast geolocation database. Protection regions should not be declared as white space regions due to the quantization error. In this work, circular and basis based approximations are presented for quantizing the protection regions. In circular approximation, quantization design algorithms are presented to protect the primary from quantization error while minimizing the white space area declared as protected region. An efficient quantizer design algorithm is presented in this case. For basis based approximations, an efficient method to represent the protection regions by an `envelope' is developed. By design this envelope is a sparse approximation, i.e., it has lesser number of non-zero coefficients in the basis when compared to the original protection region. The approximation methods presented in this work are tested using three experimental data-sets.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures, submitted to IEEE DySPAN (Technology) 201

Recent developments in child protection policy and practice in Scotland and the UK

This paper describes the developments in child protection policy and practice following the deaths of Kennedy McFarlane and Victoria Climbie. It outlines child protection statistics in Scotland and the findings of the Child Protection Review. It discusses the Children's Charter and the Framework for Standards in Child Protection. It also briefly discusses developments in England; Directors of Children's Services, Local Safeguarding Children's Boards, Information Database, and Children's Commissioner

The Future of Database Protection in U.S. Copyright Law

In the recent British Horseracing Board case, the English High Court signaled a return to the sweat of the brow standard of copyright protection. Although recent attempts have been made in the United States to protect databases under this standard, this iBrief argues that the information economy is wise to continuing protecting this data through trade secret, State misappropriation and contract law until legislation is passed

Are We Legislating Away Our Scientific Future? The Database Debate

The ambiguity of the present copyright laws governing the protection of databases creates a situation where database owners, unsure of how IP laws safeguard their information, overprotect their data with oppressive licenses and technological mechanisms (condoned by the DMCA) that impede interoperation. Databases are fundamental to scientific research, yet the lack of interoperability between databases and limited access inhibits this research. The US Congress, spurred by the European Database Directive, and heavily lobbied by the commercial database industry, is presently considering ways to legislate database protections; most of the present suggestions for legislation will be detrimental to scientific progress. The author agrees that new legislation is necessary, but not to provide extra-copyright protections, as database owners would like, but to create an environment wherein data is easily accessible to academic research and interoperability is encouraged; yet simultaneously providing database owners with incentives to produce new databases. One possibility would be to introduce standardized compulsory licensing of databases to academics following an embargo period where databases could be sold at free-market prices (to recoup costs). Databases would be given some sort of intellectual property protection both during and after this embargo in return for a limiting of technical safeguards and conforming to interoperability standards