Database Directive evaluation

The long-overdue evaluation of the Database Directive, that brought the EU the dreaded sui generis database right, has finally been released by the European Commission. The report is very critical of the sui generis right; it finds that the economic impact of the sui generis right on database production is unproven, and discusses various future scenarios, including repealing the Directive. The evaluation report - a direct result of the fresh air that has been blowing through the EC's Directorate-General for the Internal Market & Services since the beginning of the year (under a new Commissioner and a new Head of the Copyright Unit) - is available at http://europa.eu.int/comm/internal_market/copyright/docs/databases/evaluation_report_en.pdf. Interested parties are invited to commenton the evaluation by 12 March 2006.
P. Bernt Hugenholtz Institute for Information Law University of Amsterdam Rokin 84 NL-1012 KX Amsterdam The Netherlands http://www.ivir.nl