Search

Copyright laws protect the unique manifestation, unique formulation of an idea/information. In case of databases protection refers to the way of systematisation and/or selection, not the data themselves. The amendment to the Berne Convention dealt with the issue of the legal protection of databases, the Rome Convention extended protection to the owner of the physical manifestation of the intellectual product, while the WIPO Contract declared unanimously that computer programmes need to be protected in the same way as literary works. A separate legal regulation for databases was justified by copyright itself not being apt for the efficient protection of collections of this type. The copyright of databases has been harmonised at the European level by the Directive 96/9/EC, introducing the concept of sui generis rights. Following the so-called Infosoc Directive (2001/29 EC on databases) the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and neighbouring rights has started. The author sets out the logics of database protection, the semantics of the Directive on databases (scope of reference, two-level copyright protection), and presents the practice of applying the Directive in some European countries. The analyses of individual legal cases provide assistance to the refinement of the sui generis protection regarding content. In concrete legal situations the deficiencies of the Directive become visible, by whose correction the content of the Directive can be made more exact. In the second part of the article the author cites real cases from international practice, and explains the concepts of substantial investment and extraction of a substantial part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the use of the esp@cenet patent database, the paper demonstrates that, in many cases, the use of classification systems is a condition to good quality searching. Efficient search tools relieve the user of the in-depth familiarizing with the classification system, yet they carry out the search with the appropriate classification symbols. In the esp@cenet database, classification symbols are provided automatically, in the result lists of natural language keyword searches. These symbols are then exported into the advanced search interlace with one click. Through the search examples, readers of the paper get acquainted with the tools of patent search, while they are also provided with further information on the European Patent Office's network of databases, the applied classification systems, as well as the services of the Patent Library of the Hungarian Patent Office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]