A Legal Exploration Of The Copyright Protection Of Australian Databases In The Fourth Industrial Era

Abstract

<p>Databases have existed for centuries" however, with the establishment of the fourth industrial era, technological developments have changed the way they are produced, copied and disseminated. In recent years, the judicial application of copyright laws, (which have their origins in the pre-industrial era) to databases have revealed the limitations of copyright. The central thesis argues that the current judicial application of Australian copyright law, as perceived by some database producers, under-protects some privately funded databases. This is due to a failure to establish 'independent intellectual effort' and traceable human authorship in databases involving collaborative processes and technology.</p> <p>This is problematic because it purportedly (1) challenges copyright's role as a primary legal mechanism for assigning ownership and access rights, while (2) leaving such works open to economic exploitation, which discourages investment in database production from a Lockean perspective. In exploring the issues, six separate but interrelated questions pertaining to the copyright protection of modern databases will be examined:</p> <p>1. What are two primary underlying philosophical justifications for the copyright protection of databases?</p> <p>2. How has originality and authorship of databases evolved under international law, the EU and US?</p> <p>3. What are the Australian copyright subsistence criteria and, over the last 200 years, how has originality and authorship judicially evolved to regulate the protection of databases?</p> <p>4. How does the current Australian judicial application pertaining to originality and authorship purport to under-protect some databases?</p> <p>5. What lessons can be learned from the EU sui generis database right, if Australia were to implement such a regime?</p> <p>6. What lessons can be learned from current open access initiatives if applied to Australian databases?</p> <p>This study makes a meaningful contribution to Australian copyright scholarship and policy through its novel approach, which seeks to balance the underlying rationales and philosophical justifications of copyright, sui generis rights and open access initiatives with the pressures evident from changing technology. It seeks novelty in its overall approach to the thesis question through an underlying distinction between private and public databases. This results in investigation which encompasses three aspects: (1) the philosophical origins of copyright and an extensive study of Australian precedent as relevant to private databases (2) sui generis database rights as relevant to private databases and (3) open access works as relevant to public databases. After considering the six questions posited, the study concludes with recommendations to amend Australian copyright to ensure the ongoing future protection of databases.</p>