Press Release: Intellectual property: evaluation of EU rules on databases

The European Commission on 12 December 2005 published an evaluation of the protection EU law gives to databases. EU law existing at the time protected databases by copyright if they were sufficiently creative. Other databases, especially those that were compilations of information or commonplace data, such as telephone directories, music charts or football match listings, may benefit from a new form of protection introduced by the 1996 Database Directive. Stakeholders were invited to comment on the evaluation by 12 March 2006.

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