A Question of Balance Private Rights and the Public Interest in Scientific and Technical Databases (1999) / Chapter Skim
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At the same time, there are legitimate concerns by the rights holders in databases regarding unauthorized and uncompensated uses of their data products, including at times the wholesale commercial m~sappropnation of proprietary databases.
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The same technologies that facilitate the effective production, dissemination, and use of digital databases, however, can also expedite their unauthorized dissemination and use, undermining incentives to create new databases, enabling unfair competition and wholesale m~sappropriation, and in the most extreme cases, exposing the original database rights holder to market failure. The institutions, organizations, and individuals involved form a highly complex web of interrelationships some competing and some complementary, some creating or using original data collections or derivative productions, and spanning activities in both public and private, national and international, and scientific and non-scientific contexts (see Table S
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trade secret law, used in conjunction with contract law and various new technological protections; and (4) unfair competition law in state common law, which is of limited value for database protection at this time but is viewed as a potential model for a new federal database protection statute.
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Genomic From the public domain: government-produced maps (federal, state, local) , digital geographic data, remotely sensed imagery Other sources: commercial and other countries' maps, digital data, remotely sensed imagery, other published sources National Center for GenBank: DNA and protein Direct contributions from Biotechnology sequence data; Other genomic scientists; access to other Information mapping databases; 3D protein databases from government, (Government)
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and directly to corporate customers Mapping services distributed via Internet Internet access via Web servers and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Internet access Source code distributed directly Some software products downloaded from the Web; others require on-site expert installation continued
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Information services Linkages to publishers' full-text databases Meteorological National Climatic Climatological summaries from National Weather Service, World Data Center National Weather Service Meteorological Organization, (Government) stations; historical long-term NASA, bilateral agreements climatic databases with other countries Unidata Program, Quasi-real-time atmospheric Public: National Weather Service, University and related data National Environmental Data Corporation for Case study data sets Service Atmospheric Software tools Private: network of lightning Research sensors, sensors in commercial (Not-for-Profit)
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. agribusiness Variety of forms: hard-copy publication, CD-ROM or floppy disk, Internet access; NIST distributes directly or via agreements with secondary distributors Electronic access, hard copy, CD-ROM Diskette, CD-ROM, FTP files, Internet access, hard copy Hard-copy, microfiche, magnetic tape, disks, CD-ROM, FTP, Internet Internet Public and private data communication networks: satellite broadcasting services and Internet
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law, one that could then serve as a model for an international treaty in this area. RECOMMENDATIONS Because of the complex, interdependent relationships among public-sector and private-sector database producers, disseminators, and users, any action to increase the rights of persons in one category likely will compromise the rights of the persons in the other categories, with far-reaching and potentially negative consequences.7 Of course, it is in the common interest of both database rights holders and users and of society generally to achieve a workable balance among the respective interests so that all legitimate rights remain reasonably 7 The potential for unintended consequences from new sui generis intellectual property legislation and the need for caution were emphasized by the former chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary, Robert W
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5. During the period of protection, user rights depend on the terms of the license supported by the new property right; database would not enter the public domain for at least 15 years (and in Europe possibly never if the rights holder continues to invest in maintenance or updates of a dynamic database)
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Limit any additional protection to prohibition of acts of unauthorized taking that cause substantial competitive injury to the database rights holder in the rights holder's actual market. The standard of harm should be sufficiently clear to permit good-faith users to know when they are infringing on a database rights holder's rights and should not undermine the nation's capabilities for innovation or competition in the marketplace.
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Specifically, any such legislation should: a. Require database rights holders to identify the date on which a database was created so that the user will know when it no longer enjoys statutory protection (of course, those databases that remain commercially valuable longer than the statutory period of protection can continue to be protected by other means, such as copyright, trade secret, contract, and technical and other measures)
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4. Federal government agencies, including federal science agencies as appropriate, should undertake and fund external research that investigates the changing and complex economic aspects of S&T database activities, particularly in the context of any new legislative database protection measures that may be enacted and in support of legislative principle number 7 recommended above.
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Database Directive. Recommended Approach for the Not-for-Profit S&T Community The not-for-profit S&T community should continue to promote and adhere to the policy of full and open exchange of data at both the national and international levels.
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