The PPA met with the Patent Office last week to discourage the withdrawal of 1996 legislation that protects business database information. The PPA said the proposal puts the 17bn business information industry at risk.
"The industry is both database-dependent and database-driven, as well as deriving a large part of its revenue from the sale of database information," said PPA chief executive Ian Locks.
The EC announced the proposal last October as part of a major overhaul to "simplify more than 1,400 legal acts".
The EC's original announcement stated there would be no automatic withdrawal of the Directive, but that it, along with several other copyright-related directives, would be examined "with a view to improving the coherence and operation of the legal framework and adapting it to the new digital age".
The European Federation of Magazine Publishers (FAEP) agreed to support a review as long as it retained the "sui generis" right, which protects a publisher's investment in creating a database.
In October, the PPA asked publishers to provide information on database investments they had made since 1996. The PPA will lobby the UK government to work with the EU and give publishers a say on any potential changes to the law.
"The long history of UK regulatory acceptance and support for the principle of recognising database creation as intellectual property is at risk," said Locks.
The PPA said that, according to the Connecting Business report, the UK's business information and professional media industry had grown by 47% over five years, and the recognition of intellectual property had been key to this.
Database Directive
- The Directive is the protection of all databases in the EU that were "intellectually created"
- "Intellectual property" must have involved substantial investment, monetary or otherwise
- Firms able to prove investment own rights to contents
- The EC's proposals are part of a campaign to "cut red tape" over the next three years
- The PPA calls removal of protection a "potential hammer blow to intellectual property"
PPA rallies against plan to rehash database law
The Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) has launched a campaign against a proposal by the European Commission (EC) to review the Database Directive, potentially overruling database intellectual property rights.
