The Concept of a Database as an Object of Copyright in the EU

Abstract

The article examines the characteristics of a database as an object of copyright in the EU. The relevance of the study stems from the fact that Ukrainian legal doctrine addresses the legal protection of databases in the EU without taking into account the case law of the European Court of Justice, resulting in an incomplete legal characterisation of a database as an object of copyright. The need for this study is also explained by the general necessity of taking into account the rulings of the European Court of Justice, which interpret the provisions of the directives and define the specifics of their application, when adapting national legislation to the EU acquis. In light of this, the purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of databases as objects of copyright in the EU, based on the provisions of Directive 96/9 on the legal protection of databases and the rulings of the European Court of Justice regarding the substance of these provisions. The article consistently outlines the content of the Directive’s provisions and the interpretations provided by the European Court of Justice regarding the following aspects: the classification of a database as a collection of independent materials that can be separated from one another without affecting their value; the classification of a database as a systematic or methodical arrangement of data that provides individual access to each data item; the criterion of originality as a condition for a database to be eligible for copyright protection; the extension of protection solely to the result of the arrangement of data and the absence of any restriction on existing rights relating to the content of the database; the independence of copyright protection for a database from the authorship of the materials included in it; the independence of copyright protection for a database from the type, nature, content, or any other characteristics of the materials included in the database. The article emphasises that the originality of a database is assessed separately from the originality of the data: a collection of original works or other materials may not be subject to copyright protection due to the absence of creative choice in its compilation, whereas a collection of publicly available, unprotected data may be organised in an original manner, thereby conferring originality on the database. Data as such — even if specifically created for a particular database — is not covered by the copyright protection afforded to the database and does not affect that protection.