Database Protection -- Information Industry Perspective

The Information Industry Association ("IIA") has posted a response to earlier criticisms of intiatives to establish a new international and domestic legal regime for protection of databases. The full IIA paper, entitled DATABASE PROTECTION -- THE TIME IS NOW, as well as other materials developed by IIA, can be found at:

   http://www.infoindustry.org/ppgrc/prc/prc.htm

Below are the introductory paragraphs from IIA's new paper.

The Information Industry Association ("IIA") is a prime supporter of both the U.S. proposal at the World Intellectual Property Organization ("WIPO") for an international treaty for the protection of databases and of H.R. 3531. That bill closely parallels the U.S. treaty proposal and was introduced in the 104th Congress by Chairman Carlos Moorhead of the House Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property. IIA is a trade association of some 550 corporate members involved in the production and distribution of information, especially in the online environment. IIA's members include both Fortune 500 and small entrepreneurial firms that create and use content, develop software products to manage that content, and own and operate the transmission services that underlie the emerging National and Global Information Infrastructures. This posting is designed to present the views of IIA on the issue of sui generis protection for databases, with the hope of encouraging informed debate.

Much of the current debate on establishing a sui generis form of protection for databases has been engendered by the Association of Research Libraries ("ARL") in a paper prepared by Professor Peter Jaszi and posted on the ARL website ( "the Paper"). Unfortunately, most of this rhetoric about the database proposal has been unduly inflammatory and is based on misinformation or an incomplete reading of both the WIPO treaty proposal and H.R. 3531. According to the Paper, adoption of either an international treaty or H.R. 3531 will change the current, paradise of "free" data use into an arid landscape where quality data sources are as rare as an oasis.

If we look at the issues practically, however, the complaints seem more like a mirage than reality. All of us -- not just researchers and academics, but also investors, business people, professionals, and plain old consumers -- increasingly depend upon high quality database products and services. The United States leads the world in the production and distribution of these databases, but that situation is acutely threatened by domestic and international legal developments. Enactment of an international treaty and a U.S. law providing for non-copyright protection against unfair competition in the database industry is a solution in the best interests of all database users.

Dan Duncan
<dduncan[_at_]infoindustry.org> Received on Mon Oct 28 1996 - 18:36:10 GMT