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VINCENT VAN GOGH, “SWEAT OF THE BROW,” AND DATABASE PROTECTION
Author(s) -
Blanke Jordan M.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
american business law journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.248
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1744-1714
pISSN - 0002-7766
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-1714.2002.tb00307.x
Subject(s) - law , library science , citation , sociology , political science , computer science
This paper examines how copyright law and other legal theories have been used to protect databases in general, with a special emphasis on databases found on the Internet. It presents a model for applying copyright principles to databases. The model focuses on the creativity of the compilation and the creativity of its components. This paper concludes that copyright law, even with the advent of the Internet, should not be extended to protect non-creative compilations of non-creative works. Such works exhibit no originality or creativity, and therefore, should not be protected by copyright. If a database is worthy of any copyright protection, it is either because its individual components are copyrightable, or because its arrangement, coordination or selection of data is sufficiently creative. The medium where the database is stored should not change the legal principles.