A Study On The Law Protection Of The Special Rights Of Database In China

In the age of information, database products play increasingly important roles in our life. However, as user flexibility expands, the ease with which information can be accessed electronically and perfectly copied by commercial competitors is also increasing. This presents a challenge for intellectual property law.All along, countries in the world mainly used the Copyright Act and Anti-Unfair Competition Law to resolve the related database replication issues. But the traditional intellectual property is poorly suited to protecting database products. The Anti-Unfair Competition Law, which more effective in protecting the rights of databases than the traditional intellectual property laws, focus on unfair competition acts of commercial activities, but its scope of protection and standard of judgment are uncertain.Traditional legal system can not protect the investment of database producers effectively. So Database producers rely on the technical means to distant their products from illegal copying and transmission. When the technical means are strengthened, the interests of public domain and the right of fair use would be harmed. Lack of specific laws of database protection will tamper with the development of the industry and the national economy. Therefore, the EU, the United States and WEPO are actively exploring a new type of intellectual property law - the law of special rights of database to provide better legal protection to database products. But, due to the profound impact of copyright law on the existing laws, the database definitions in these laws are too broad, so they have to carve out a series of fair use exceptions. This leads to the laws uncertainty and affects their effectiveness.In China, the development of database industry is behind Europe and the United States and other developed countries, legislation is not an urgent demand. But to the future, for the healthy development of databases, the specific legislation is the only way. By comparison study of existing special laws and Bills of database protection, this article posed a better approach to database protection legislation of China in the future, a model based on the underlying principles of trademark and patent registration. This model uses a combination of market and government regulation to replace the strongly market-focused approaches inherent in both the copyright and Anti-Unfair Competition models. Legislation based on this model would create a government authority to oversee a register of database rights, applications for registration, compulsory licensing, and the release of certain database contents into the public domain. Ultimately, a legislature could empower the administrative authority to resolve disputes among database creators, their competitors, and those who seek access to the contents of a database.