The Intellectual Property Right Of Geological Data

Geological data which bears rich information plays an important role in the government decision-making, resources exploration, businesses investment and so on. As the range of human activities keeps expanding and the social economics develops rapidly, geological information is becoming more and more important. However, there isn’t a specific framework to protect the geological data in the national legal system. In order to change the circumstance, this thesis proposes to establish a reasonable corresponding legal protection system, which is based on the existing legal system. The main work of this thesis is summarized as follows.The first chapter elaborates the purposes and values of the research. The reform of economic system has resulted in the change of the geological prospecting industry’s operation. The interest relating to the geological data has changed. At present, our country mainly adopts the administrative way to protect the geological data, but there are some insurmountable problems, so it need other means of protection. Secondly, the chapter gives an overall introduction of the existing research of domestic and abroad on geological data’s protection. This part is to elaborate the value of the study.In the second chapter, the concept of geological data is described, and the emphasis of this chapter is placed on the analyzing of its natural and social characteristics, which is the theoretical basis for the establishment of the protection. In addition, we classify geological data into different categories in terms of specific rules, which provides foundation for the different types of rights on the geological data.The third chapter presents two patterns of geological data protection which are built on the same fact that geological data has the intellectual property. One type is called individual right which could be the trade-secrets’right or the right of proprietary information; the other type is called the bundle of rights", which includes the right of discovery, patents, copyrights and trade secrets.In the fourth chapter, the author proposes a comparatively complete frame of legal protection based on the characteristics of geological data. In the beginning, the author points out the ownership of different types of geological data. Then considering the characteristics and the process, the writer suggests to apply the copyright to protect the geological data, and points out the unique of the subject, object, content and limitation of rights. Finally the paper narrates some other special rights as supplements of the copyright, such as the right of discovery, the special right as the static protection, non-disclosure agreement security geological data dynamic circulationThe research work has an important role in the maintenance of the ownership of geological data and the promotion of the healthy development of the geological information industry. At the same time, this paper provides a useful reference for the follow-up research on geological data legal protection.