The Dutch geschriften-bescherming

B9 10868. Een eerste (en nog wel buitenlands) antwoord op de vraag of het antwoord op de tweede prejudiciële vraag in HvJ EU Football Dataco het einde betekent van de Nederlandse geschriftenbescherming en de bescherming van programmagegevens (zie B9 10864):

Football Dataco: skill and labour is dead! Summary & comment by Dr. Estelle Derclaye, University of Nottingham, School of Law.

“Finally, the decision means that the English skill and labour copyright protection as well as the Dutch geschriftenbescherming and Nordic catalogue rule cannot subsist for “new databases”. But the answer to the second question is not totally clarifying. How about “copyright-like” protection such as protection against parasitism or slavish copying, which many national laws provide in their tort or special unfair competition statutes? The Court of Appeal of England and Wales had asked the Court more specifically “Does the Directive preclude national rights in the nature of copyright in databases other than those provided for by [Directive 96/9]?” Maybe the Court of Justice assumed that since the UK does not have unfair competition law (except passing off), it did not refer to that type of protection. Nevertheless, the Luxembourg court could have interpreted the question in a more extensive way since it was posed in such broad terms, i.e. capable of encompassing unfair competition-type legislation. The Court’s answer is not entirely clear on this point if at all, but on a logical construction of its paragraph 49, it is fair to assume that that sort of protection is also out of the window. Indeed, it would adversely affect the functioning of the internal market and free movement of goods and services if databases could obtain quasi-copyright protection through unfair competition law provisions.”

Lees het gehele commentaar hier (KluwerCopyrightBlog).