Database Right

Regulation 13 creates a sui generis property right, database right, in a database where there has been substantial investment, whether financial, human or technical, in obtaining, verifying or presenting its contents; the right does not depend on the database or its contents being a copyright work.

Regulation 16 provides that a person infringes database right if, without the rightholder's consent, they extract or re-utilise all or a substantial part of the database's contents, and that the repeated and systematic extraction or re-utilisation of insubstantial parts may itself amount to extracting a substantial part. Regulation 12 defines extraction as the permanent or temporary transfer of the contents to another medium by any means or in any form.

The same regulation defines re-utilisation as making the contents available to the public by any means.

Regulation 17 gives database right a term of fifteen years from the end of the calendar year in which the database was completed, or from when it was first made available to the public if earlier, and a substantial change to the database's contents, including one built up from successive additions, deletions or alterations, that amounts to a substantial new investment gives the resulting database its own new fifteen-year term.