Database protection in a global economy

Revue Internationale de Droit Economique

Volumn 16, Issue 2-3, 2002, Pages 455-504

  Reichman, J H ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33846327355     PISSN: 10108831     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3917/ride.162.0455     Document Type: Article

References (308)

1. Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, Annex 1C, Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ( " TRIPS Agreement " ), 15 April 1994, 33 I. L. M. 81 (1994).
2. See World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty, adopted at Geneva, Switzerland, December 20, 1996, 36 I. L. M. 65 (1997)
3. World Intellectual Property Organization Performance and Phonograms Treaty, adopted at Geneva, Switzerland, December 20, 1996, 36 I. L. M. 76 (1997).
4. World Intellectual Property Organization, Standing Committee on the Law of Patents, Draft Patent Law Treaty (SPLT), WIPO Doc. SCP/7/3, March 6, 2002.
5. World Intellectual Property Organization, Draft Treaty on Databases, WIPO Doc. CRNR/DC/6, Aug. 30, 1996.
6. Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, 1996 O. J. (L77) 20 ( " E. C. Directive on Databases " ).
7. See Jane C. Ginsburg, Creation and Commercial Value: Copyright Protection of Works of Information, 90 COLUM. L. REV. 1865 (1990)
8. Jane C. Ginsburg, No " Sweat " ? Copyright and Other Protection of Works of Information After Feist v. Rural Telephone, 92 COLUM. L. REV. 338 (1992)
9. Jane C. Ginsburg, Copyright, Common Law, and Sui Generis Protection of Databases in the United States and Abroad, 66 U. CIN. L. REV. 151 (1997)
10. Paula Baron, Back to the Future: Learning from the Past in the Database Debate, 62 OHIO STATE L. J. 874 (2001).
11. See Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc., 449 U. S. 340 (1991)
12. E. C. Directive on Databases, supra note 5, art. 3.
13. TRIPS Agreement, supra note 1, art. 10.2.
14. th Cir. 1993) (en banc)
15. th Cir. 1995).
16. TRIPS Agreement, supra note 1, art. 10.2.
17. See generally Yochai Benkler, Constitutional Bounds of Database Protection: The Role of Judicial Review in the Creation and Definition of Private Rights in Information, 15 BERKELEY TECH. L. J. 535 (2000)
18. Yochai Benkler, Free as the Air to Common Use: First Amendment Constraints on Enclosure of the Public Domain, 74 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 354 (1999)
19. James Boyle, Foucault in Cyberspace: Surveillance, Sovereignty, and Hardwired Censors, 66 U. CIN. L. REV. 177 (1997)
20. Neil Netanel, Locating Copyright Within the First Amendment Skein, 54 STAN. L. REV. 1 (2001).
21. Robert C. Denicola, Copyright in Collections of Facts: A Theory for the Protection of Nonfiction Literary Works, 81 COLUM. L. REV. 528 (1981)
22. Wendy J. Gordon, On Owning Information: Intellectual Property and the Restitutionary Impulse, 78 VA. L. REV 149 (1992).
23. Denicola, supra note 12.
24. See Laura D'Andrea Tyson & Edward F. Sherry, " Statutory Protection for Databases: Economic and Public Policy Issues " , research paper prepared under contract to Reed-Elsevier, Inc. and the Thomson Corp., and presented as testimony on behalf of the Information Industry Association at the Oct. 23, 1997, Hearing on H. R. 2652, the " Collections of Information Antipiracy Act " , held by the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary of the U. S. House of Representatives; G. M. Hunsucker, The European Database Directive: Regional Stepping Stone to an International Model?, 7 FORDHAM INTELL. PROP. MEDIA & ENT. L. J. 697 (1997). But see David Fewer, Constitutionalizing Copyright: Freedom of Expression and the Limits of Copyright in Canada, 55 U. TORONTO FAC. L. REV. 175, 177 (1997) (denying existence of market failure in Canada)
25. Stephen M. Maurer & Suzanne Scotchmer, Database Protection: Is It Broken and Should We Fix It?, 284 SCIENCE 1129 (1999) (no market failures in sight).
26. See J. H. Reichman & Pamela Samuelson, Intellectual Property Rights in Data?, 50 VAND. L. REV. 51 (1997).
27. See supra note 6; Denicola, supra note 12; see, most recently, Justin Hughes, Created Facts - Or the Occasional Protection of Ideas, Names and Facts in Copyright Law (forthcoming 2002). The United Kingdom absorbed factual works into copyright law. See, e.g., Baron, supra note 6.
28. See, e.g., Gunnar Karnell, The Nordic Catalogue Rule, in PROTECTING WORKS OF FACT 67 (E. J. Dommering and P. B. Hugenholtz eds., 1991).
29. nd Cir. 1997). See, e.g., Jason R. Boyarski, The Heist of Feist: Protection for Collections of Information and the Possible Federalization of " Hot News " , 21 CARDOZO L. REV. 871 (1999)
30. Brian F. Fitzgerald, Protecting Informational Products (Including Databases) Through Unjust Enrichment Law: An Australian Perspective, 1998 E. I. P. R. 244.
31. See, e.g., J. H. Reichman & Paul Uhlir, Database Protection at the Crossroads: Recent Developments and Their Impact on Science and Technology, 14 BERKELEY L. J. 793 (1999) [hereinafter Reichman & Uhlir (1999)]; cf. J. H. Reichman, Electronic Information Tools: The Outer Edge of World Intellectual Property Law, 24 INT'l REV. INDUS. PROP. & COPYRIGHT L. 446 (1993) [hereinafter Reichman, Electronic Information Tools].
32. Fewer, supra note 14, at 177; see also Hunsucker, supra note 14.
33. Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15, at 125.
34. See Fewer, supra note 14 (case of Canada)
35. Stephen M. Maurer, " Across Two Worlds: Database Protection in the U. S. and Europe " , paper prepared for Industry Canada's Conference on Intellectual Property and Innovation in the Knowledge-Based Economy, May 23-24, 2001. See generally NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, A QUESTION OF BALANCE: PRIVATE RIGHTS AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL DATABASES (1999) [hereinafter NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE].
36. See, e.g., Hunsucker, supra note 14
37. Tyson & Sherry, supra note 14.
38. See NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, BITS OF POWER: ISSUES IN GLOBAL ACCESS TO SCIENTIFIC DATA (1997) [hereinafter NRC, BITS OF POWER]; Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15.
39. See Maurer, supra note 22
40. Maurer & Scotchmer, supra note 14.
41. See NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra note 22.
42. J. H. Reichman & Jonathan A. Franklin, Privately Legislated Intellectual Property Rights: Reconciling Freedom of Contract with Public Good Uses of Information, 147 U. PA. L. REV. 875 (1999).
43. See, e.g., Mark A. Lemley, The Law and Policy of Intellectual Property Licensing, 87 CALIF. L. REV. 111 (1999)
44. Reichman & Franklin, supra note 27.
45. See, e.g., Cynthia M. Bott, Protection of Information Products: Balancing Commercial Reality and the Public Domain, 67 U. CIN. L. REV. 237 (1998)
46. Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15.
47. See NRC, BITS OF POWER, supra note 24
48. NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra note 22.
49. See P. Bernt Hugenholtz, " The New Database Right: Early Case Law from Europe " , paper presented at the Ninth Annual Conference on International IP Law and Policy, Fordham University School of Law, New York, April 19-20, 2001, available at .
50. See NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra note 22.
51. See Reichman & Uhlir (1999), supra note 19
52. see also J. H. Reichman & Paul Uhlir, Promoting Public Good Uses of Scientific Data: A Contractually Reconstructed Commons for Science and Innovation, paper presented at the Conference on the Public Domain, Duke University, November 9-11, 2001 (publication forthcoming 2002) [hereinafter Reichman & Uhlir (2002)].
53. See Reichman & Franklin, supra note 27
54. Benkler (1999), supra note 11.
55. See Guido Calabresi & A. Douglas Melamed, Property Rules, Liability Rules and Alienability: One View of the Cathedral, 85 HARV. L. REV. 1089 (1972).
56. J. H. Reichman, Legal Hybrids Between the Patent and Copyright Paradigms, 94 COLUM. L. REV. 2432 (1994) [hereinafter Reichman, Legal Hybrids]; J. H. Reichman, Charting the Collapse of the Patent-Copyright Dichotomy: Premises for a Restructured International Intellectual Property System, 13 CARDOZO ARTS & ENT. L. J. 475 (1995) [hereinafter Reichman, Charting the Collapse].
57. See supra note 36
58. see also William Kingston, The " Thesis " Chapters, in DIRECT PROTECTION OF INFORMATION, 1-124 (William Kingston ed., 1987)
59. William Kingston, " Unlocking the Potential of Intellectual Property " , paper presented to the Swedish International Symposium on Economics, Law and Intellectual Property, Gotheberg, June 26-30, 2000 at 3-4.
60. See especially J. H. Reichman, Of Green Tulips and Legal Kudzu: Repackaging Rights in Subpatentable Innovation, 53 VAND. L. REV. 1743 (2000).
61. See supra note 11
62. see also Paul J. Heald, The Extraction/Duplication Dichotomy: Constitutional Line-Drawing in the Database Debate, 62 OHIO ST. L. J. 933 (2001)
63. Marci A. Hamilton, A Response to Professor Benkler, 15 BERKELEY TECH. L. J. 605 (2000).
64. For details, see Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15; see generally Jens L. Gaster [Principal Administrator, DG XV-E-4, European Commission, Brussels], The New E. U. Directive Concerning the Legal Protection of Databases, 20 FORDHAM INT'L L. J. 1129 (1997).
65. Maurer, supra NOTE 22.
66. See, E.G., Reichman & samuelson, Supra note 15, at 82-83 (citing Authorities) ; communication From prof. justin hughes (former official at uspto responsible for database negotiations). the last minute deletion of a compulsory license for sole-source providers radically changed the bill that the european parliament had approved, and it left parliamentary concerns about the lack of limitations and exceptions with no credible answer. yet, the bill was adopted without being returned to the european parliament for reconsideration and approval in its final, much altered form. one can only wonder if the lack of procedural purity should not constitute a fatal constitutional defect.
67. See E. C. Directive on databases, Supra note 5, art. 1 (2)
68. HUGENHOLTZ, SUPRA NOTE 31.
69. SEE E. C. DIRECTIVE ON DATABASES, SUPRA NOTE 5, ART. 7 (1).
70. ID., ART. 7 (4) ; SEE HUGENHOLTZ, SUPRA NOTE 31
71. MAURER, SUPRA NOTE 22.
72. SEE, E.G., 17 U. S. C. §§101 ( " derivative works " ), 103, 106 (2) (2002) [U. S.].
73. E. C. Directive on databases, Supra Note 5, art. 9 (b).
74. SEE NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra note 22, at 70-71
75. Reichman & Uhlir (1999), supra note 19, at 803-04. One should note that one of the principle lobbyists supporting strong database protection in both the E. U. and the U. S. is the world's leading supplier of commercialized scientific publications. One should also note that European governments that generate data may exercise either copyrights or sui generis rights in their own productions, unlike the situation in the United States, where the government cannot claim intellectual property rights in the data it generates and must make such data available to the public for no more than a cost-of-delivery fee. See NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra note 22, at 52-58.
76. E. C. Directive on Databases, supra note 5, arts. 7 (2), 7 (5).
77. E. C. Directive on Databases, supra note 5, art.10
78. Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15, at 84-90.
79. Trademarks do last in perpetuity, but they do not protect innovation or investments as such, only the signs and symbols that enable consumers to distinguish one producer's goods from another's. William Landes & Richard A. Posner, Trademark Law: An Economic Perspective, 30 J. L. ECON. 265 (1987). They are thus not legal monopolies, and because they protect only against acts that yield a likelihood of confusion, there are historic questions about their status as " property " at all. These historical debates in turn reflect confusion about the fundamental distinction between exclusive property rights and liability rules, which have a different economic logic. See Calabresi&Melamed, supra note 35
80. Reichman, Legal Hybrids, supra note 36. Trademarks are " property " in the sense that proprietors obtain legally enforceable entitlements; but that entitlement is only to avoid deceiving or confusing consumers by the adoption of similar identifying symbols. While the property-like status of marks has been strengthened against " dilution " in recent years, it confers no rights in the underlying products of innovation or investment as such, which anyone remains free to copy and sell under a different mark.
81. See E. C. Directive on Databases, supra note 5, art. 11
82. Maurer, supra note 22.
83. See E. C. Directive on Databases, supra note 5, art. 13
84. Hugenholtz, supra note 31.
85. See supra note 5.
86. See Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15, at 85-95.
87. See supra note 52 and accompanying text. However, material reciprocity may violate the residual national treatment clause of the Paris Convention, which is actionable under TRIPS. Cf. United States - Section 211 Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1998, Report of the Appellate Body, WT/DS202/AB/R, January 2, 2002.
88. th Congress
89. 62 OHIO ST. L. J. 869 (2001).
90. For details, see Reichman & Uhlir (1999), supra note 19.
91. Communication from Prof. Justin Hughes.
92. Letter from Department of Commerce General Counsel Andrew Pincus to Senate Judiciary committee Chairman Orrin Hatch and Ranking Member Patrick Leahy, August 4, 1998, available at
93. See, e.g., The Administration Statement before the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, Committee on the Judiciary, U. S. House of Representatives, concerning H. R. 354, the " Collections of Information Antipiracy Act " , 18 March 1999 [hereinafter Pincus March Testimony], available at
94. Communication from Prof. Justin Hughes. In the summer of 2001, the new Department of Commerce General Counsel, Ted Kassinger, and Justin Hughes of the USPTO, briefed the Office of Science and Technology on the Administration's past position, and informal reports indicate that most agencies remain supportive of the Administration's approach adopted in 1998-1999.
95. See NRC, BITS OF POWER, supra note 24.
96. See NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra note 22.
97. U. S. Department of State, Roundtable on Database Protection and International Science and Technology Cooperation, in association with the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association of American Universities, Washington DC, July 11, 2001.
98. See, e.g., supra notes 6, 11-12, 22.
99. See supra note 14; see most recently Yale M. Braunstein, Economic Impacts of Database Protection in Developing Countries (February 2000) [commissioned by WIPO] (finding that the strongest possible form of database protection is the best of all possible solutions in the best of all possible worlds).
100. See supra notes 11 & 39.
101. See Memorandum from William Michael Treanor, U. S. Dept. of Justice, Office of the Deputy Ass't Att'y Gen., to William R. Marshall, Associate White House Counsel, " Constitutional Concerns Raised by the Collections of Information Antipiracy H. R. 2652 " (July 28, 1998).
102. st Session, H. R. 354, The Collections of Information Antipiracy Act, Jan. 19, 1999 [hereinafter H. R. 354]. This Bill was subject to proposed amendments on Jan. 11, 2000, which, however, were not formally submitted as an amended proposal. The summary in the text sometimes reflects changes that were introduced in publicly disclosed proposals for amendments.
103. See supra note 59 and accompanying text.
104. st Session, H. R. 1858, Consumer and Investor Access to Information Act of 1999, May 19, 1999 [hereinafter H. R. 1858].
105. See generally Amanda Perkins, United States Still No Closer to Database Legislation, 2000 E. I. P. R. 366.
106. H. R. 354, supra note 70, §1401 (1).
107. Id., §1402 (a).
108. However, the second right represents a concession to the past Administration in that it foregoes the general right to control private use that appeared in previous versions. This concession thus reduces the scope of protection to a point more in line with the E. U.'s reutilization right, and it does not impede personal use by one who lawfully acquires access to the database. See id., §1402 (a).
109. See id. As originally deposited, H. R.354 spoke of " material harm to the primary market or a related market " of the investor. Id. The analysis in the text is based on the more refined but unpublished proposals of January 11, 2000. In fact, a " harm to markets " test is lifted bodily from §107 (4) of the Copyright Act of 1976, and it reflects the better view of what U. S. copyright law is all about. See J. H. Reichman, Goldstein on Copyright Law: A Realist's Approach to a Technological Age, 43 STAN. L. REV. 943 (1991) (reviewing PAUL GOLDSTEIN, COPYRIGHT: PRINCIPLES, LAW AND PRACTICE (1990)).
110. H. R. 354, supra note 70, §1402 (a) ; see supra text accompanying note 76.
111. " Market " is thus supposed to assimilate " all markets " in which a protected investor " derives or reasonably expects to derive substantial revenue, directly or indirectly " as well as all markets in which that investor " has taken demonstrable steps discernable to the public, to offer in commerce within a short period of time a product or service " from which he expected to derive a substantial revenue. H. R. 354, supra note 70, §§1401 (3) (A), (B), with additional proviso added Jan. 11, 2000.
112. In principle, only actual, likely, or planned markets are protected under this scheme, which creates a narrow opening for a value-adding competitor who arrives on the scene with an unlikely or unplanned application. Even here, however, the definitions ignore the prospects that the initial investor will continue to expand the range of projected investments over time and thus convert all the tests to moving targets that constantly expand his potential claims to protected market segments. In practice, moreover, database proprietors would be well-advised to " plan " for any market segments they can remotely foresee over time and to craft their business plans in broadly worded terms accordingly. Should by some miracle a second collector discover a surprise market niche to slip into all the same, the initial proprietor's most likely strategy would be to surround the second comer with applications of his own, in order to limit the second comer's field of expansion and to extract crosslicenses wherever possible.
113. H. R. 354, supra note 70, §1403 (2).
114. In copyright law, there is a thicket of exclusions and exceptions that must be worked through before anyone can infringe. In particular, one cannot infringe for a taking of unprotectible facts or ideas, and even a taking of protectible expression may be excused by codified exceptions for, say, teaching or research. The " fair use " exception comes into play only as a last resort, to excuse marginal takings by an alleged infringer that advance the public interest at a small cost to the proprietor. See 17 U. S. C. §§107-122.
115. Cf. Reichman & Uhlir (1999), supra note 19, at 812-20, 825-29. A further provision then completes the sense of circularity by expressly exempting any nonprofit educational, scientific, and research use that " does not materially harm the market " as previously defined. See H. R. 354, supra note 70, §1403 (b). Since any use that does not materially harm the market remains unactionable to begin with, this " concession " adds nothing but window dressing. However, another vaguely worded exception seems to recognize at least a possibility that certain " fully transformative uses " might nonetheless escape liability, but this ambiguous proposal defies interpretation in its present form and remains to be clarified.
116. H. R. 354, supra note 70, §1403 (c).
117. See Reichman & Uhlir (1999), supra note 19, at 807-08.
118. See esp. Benkler (1999), supra note 11.
119. See H. R. 354, supra note 70, §1403 (e) (f) (i).
120. See id., §1404.
121. See, e.g., Peter N. Weiss & Peter Backlund, International Information Policy in Conflict: Open and Unrestricted Access versus Government Commercialization, in BORDERS IN CYBERSPACE 300, 303 (Brian Kahin & Charles Neeson eds., 1997).
122. See NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra note 22, at 102-105.
123. H. R. 354, supra note 70, §1404 (e).
124. Cf. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Pub. L. No. 105-304, 103, 112 Stat. 2860, 2863 (1998) (codified at 17 U. S. C. 512, 1201), §§512, 1201, 1205.
125. See, e.g., Jane C. Ginsburg, Copyright and Control Over New Technologies of Dissemination, 101 COLUM. L. REV. 1613 (2001).
126. See H. R. 354, supra note 70, §§1406-1407.
127. See supra text accompanying notes 50-51
128. Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15, at 103-09 (citing authorities).
129. U. S. Constitution, Art. I., Sec. 8, cl. 8.
130. See H. R. 354, supra note 70, §1409 (i).
131. See supra note 80.
132. See H. R. 1858 (May 19, 1999), supra note 72.
133. See also H. R. REP. No. 106-350, PART-I (1999)
134. Perkins, supra note 73.
135. See H. R. 1858, supra note 72, §101 (1).
136. See id., §102.
137. See id., §101 (2).
138. See id., §101 (1) (B).
139. The Clinton Administration expressed reservations about this de facto derivative-work right, which is built into a regime that lasts forever. Communication from Prof. Justin Hughes.
140. See H. R. 1858, supra note 72, §102.
141. Id., §101 (5).
142. H. R. 1858, supra note 72, §§103 (b), (c), 104 (b), (e), 106 (a).
143. See id., §103 (d).
144. See id., §§101 (b), 104 (f). There are also express exclusions of telecommunications carriers' subscription lists (e.g., telephone directories) and of securities market data. Id., §104 (g). However, the bill proposes an amendment to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that would prohibit the misappropriation of " real-time " stock market information. Id., §201.
145. See id., §104 (d).
146. See id., §107.
147. H. R. 1858, supra note 72, §§106 (b), 106 (b) (1-6).
148. These provisions could particularly assist judicial regulation of shrink wrap and click on licenses affecting online distribution of software and other electronic information tools. See generally Reichman & Franklin, supra note 27.
149. For early proposals to this effect, see Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15.
150. See supra note 96
151. Reichman, Charting the Collapse, supra note 36.
152. See most recently Reichman, Green Tulips, supra note 38 (criticizing deviant regimes of utility models and industrial design laws).
153. See, e.g., Gordon supra note 12
154. For recent legal and economic analysis of reverse engineering, see Pamela Samuelson & Suzanne Scotchmer, The Law and Economics of Reverse Engineering, 111 YALE L. J. (2002).
155. See, e.g., Tyson & Sherry, supra note 14
156. Braunstein, supra note 67. For trenchant criticism of this approach, see James Boyle, Cruel, Mean or Lavish: Economic Analysis, Price Discrimination and Digital Intellectual Property, 52 VAND. L. REV. 2007 (2000).
157. See, e.g., Rochelle C. Dreyfuss, Information Products: A Challenge to Intellectual Property Theory, 20 N. Y. U. J. INT'l L. & POL. 897 (1988)
158. Reichman, Electronic Information Tools, supra note 19.
159. See, e.g., Calabresi & Melamed, supra note 35.
160. Gordon, supra note 12
161. see also Dennis J. Karjala, Misappropriation as a Third Intellectual Property Paradigm, 94 COLUM. L. REV. 2594 (1994).
162. See supra note 37.
163. See Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15
164. Reichman, Green Tulips, supra note 38.
165. See, e.g., Robert P. Merges, Of Property Rules, Coase, and Intellectual Property, 94 COLUM. L. REV. 2655 (1994)
166. Robert P. Merges, Contracting Into Liability Rules: Intellectual Property Rights and Collective Rights Organizations, 84 CAL. L. REV. 1293 (1996)
167. Richard A. Epstein, " Steady the Course: Property Rights in Genetic Material " , paper presented to the Intellectual Property Colloquium, Washington University (of St. Louis) Conference on Law and the Human Genome Project, April 12-13, 2002.
168. Maurer & Scotchmer, supra note 14.
169. th Cir. 1999) ; see generally Hughes, supra note 16.
170. See generally J. H. Reichman, The Duration of Copyright and the Limits of Cultural Policy, 14 CARDOZO ARTS & ENT. L. J. 625 (1996).
171. See Hughes, supra note 16.
172. See NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra notes 22, 64-68. The efficacy of these measures remains uncertain pending adoption or rejection of the Uniform Computerized Information Transactions Act (UCITA), proposed by the Uniform Law Commissioners, but adopted only in two states. This proposed uniform state law enables providers to impose harsh terms against the world, and it could disrupt the private-public balance embodied in the federal intellectual property laws unless courts apply limiting doctrines, such as pre-emption, public policy or a public-interest unconscionability doctrine. See, e.g., Lemley, supra note 28
173. Reichman & Franklin, supra note 27. Even if UCITA (which sixteen state attorneys-general opposes) fails to gain wide legislative support, the ability of private contract law and self-help measures, especially encryption devices, to regulate online access to databases relieves some of the pressure that would otherwise arise if cutting-edge databases were primarily distributed to the public in hard copies.
174. th Cir. 1996).
175. See, e.g., Roger L. Zissu, Protection for Facts and Data Bases in the New World Order, 1998 J. COPYRIGHT SOC'y U. S. A. 271; infra text accompanying notes 176-93.
176. See, e.g., Hugenholtz, supra note 31
177. see also Maurer supra note 22
178. Rebecca S. Eisenberg & Arti Rai, The Public and the Private in Biopharmaceutical Research, paper presented at the Conference on the Public Domain, Duke University, November 9-11, 2001 (publication forthcoming 2002).
179. See, e.g., Simon Chalton, Database Right: Stronger Than It Looks?, 2001 E. I. P. R. 296
180. Hugenholtz, supra note 31.
181. This section is based on Reichman & Uhlir (2002), supra note 33.
182. See Maurer, supra note 22.
183. See, e.g., Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co., 305 U. S. 111 (1938) (rejecting International News Service v. Associated P ress, 248 U. S. 215 (1918)) ; Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U. S. 225 (1964) ; Compco Corp. v. Day-Brite Lighting, Inc., 376 U. S. 234 (1964) ; Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats Inc., 489 U. S. 141 (1989) ; Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Samara Bros., 529 U. S. 205 (2000).
184. See NRC, QUESTION OF BALANCE, supra note 22, at 4-8, 9, 52-58.
185. Id., at 9; see generally Reichman & Uhlir (2002), supra note 33.
186. See Michael A. Heller & Rebecca S. Eisenberg, Can Patents Deter Innovation? The Anticommons in Biomedical Research, SCIENCE, May 1, 1998.
187. Accord Benkler (2000), supra note 11. All nonprofit activities will be especially hard hit. Over time, lost opportunity costs in neglected research and development projects owing to these balkanized inputs could become staggering, and many forms of innovation may stagnate as a result. Even so, it will not be easy to document these lost opportunity costs, although the past experience of science in this regard will be repeated across the whole information economy. For details, see Reichman&Uhlir (1999), supra note 19.
188. See, e.g., Fewer, supra note 14.
189. See, e.g., Raymond Nimmer, Breaking Barriers: The Relation Between Contract and Intellectual Property Law, 13 BERKELEY TECH. L. J. (1998)
190. Maureen O'Rourke, Property Rights and Competition on the Internet: In Search of an Appropriate Analogy, 16 BERKELEY TECH. L. J. 561 (2001).
191. See E. C. Directive, supra note 5 (Recitals)
192. Maurer, supra note 22 (describing and criticizing this thesis)
193. Tyson & Sherry, supra note 14
194. Braunstein, supra note 67.
195. Accord Maurer, supra note 22
196. Maurer & Scotchmer, supra note 14
197. Benkler (2000), supra note 11.
198. See E. C. Directive on Databases, supra note 5, art. 11.
199. See supra note 4 and accompanying text; Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15.
200. See, e.g., Michael Freno, Database Protection: Resolving the U. S. Database Dilemma with an Eye Toward International Protection, 34 CORNELL INT'l L. J. 165 (2001)
201. Michael J. Bastian, Note, Protection of " Noncreative " Databases: Harmonization of United States, Foreign and International Law, 22 BOSTON COLL. INT'l & COMP. L. REV. 425 (1999).
202. See, e.g., J. H. Reichman, From Free-Riders to Fair Followers; Global Competition Under the TRIPS Agreement, 29 N. Y. U. J. INT'l & POL. 11 (1996/1997) [hereinafter Reichman, Free-Riders]; J. H. Reichman The TRIPS Agreement Comes of Age: Conflict or Cooperation with Developing Countries?, 32 CASE W. RES. J. INT'l L. 441 (2000).
203. See, e.g., Peter Drahos, " Developing Countries and International Intellectual Property Standard-Setting " , study prepared for the U. K. Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, February 2002
204. see also Peter M. Gerhart, Reflections: Beyond Compliance Theory - TRIPS as a Substantive Issue, 32 CASE WESTERN J. INT'l L. 357 (2000)
205. J. H. Reichman & David Lange, Bargaining Around the TRIPS Agreement: The Case for Ongoing Public-Private Initiatives to Facilitate Worldwide Intellectual Property Transactions, 9 DUKE J. COMP. & INT'l L. 11 (1998).
206. Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms, Oct. 29, 1971, 25 U. S. T. 309 [hereinafter, Geneva Phonograms Convention].
207. Japan has so far waited to see the outcome of deliberations in the United States. However, the government of Korea has recently introduced a bill that would enact a strong exclusive property right in databases, along the lines of the E. U. model.
208. Besides its dealings with would-be affiliates, the E. U. includes a harmonized database regime in proposals for favorable trade agreements with Latin American countries. The U. S. has in the past followed a similar strategy under the North American Free Trade Agreement, and would continue its efforts to harmonize intellectual property protection under any proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. See generally SUSAN K. SELL, POWER AND IDEAS: NORTH-SOUTH POLITICS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND ANTITRUST (1998)
209. Susan K. Sell, Big Business and the New Trade Agreements: The Future of the World Trade Organization?, in POLITICAL ECONOMY AND THE CHANGING GLOBAL ORDER (Richard Stubbs & Jeffrey Underhill 2000).
210. See e.g., CARLOS M. CORREA, I NTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, THE WTO, and DEVELOPING COUNTRIES 123-207 (2000)
211. JAYASHREE WATAL, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN the WTO and DEVELOPING COUNTRIES (2001)
212. J. H. Reichman, Taking the Medicine with Angst: An Economist's View of the TRIPS Agreement, 4 J. I. E. L. 795 (2001) (reviewing KEITH E. MASKUS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY (2000)).
213. Cf. supra note 151 (case of Korea).
214. Cf. PETER DRAHOS & JOHN BRAITHEWAITE, INFORMATION FEUDALISM: WHO OWNS THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY? (2002).
215. Professor Justin Hughes, while working at USPTO in the period 1996-2001, deserves particular credit for the Clinton Administration's having articulated this policy.
216. See supra notes 52-53, and accompanying text.
217. Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-620, 98 Stat. 3347 (1984), codified at 17 U. S. C. §901, 914
218. TRIPS Agreement, supra note 1, arts. 35-38.
219. For optimistic views, see, e.g., KEITH E. MASKUS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY 143-69, 235-43 (2000)
220. GAIL E. EVANS, LAWMAKING UNDER THE TRADE CONSTITUTION, 107-130 (2000)
221. Graeme B. Dinwoodie, A New Copyright Order: Why National Courts Should Create Global Norms, 149 U. PA. L. REV. 469 (2000). But see Drahos, supra note 149; infra note 167.
222. See, e.g., 1 STEPHEN P. LADAS, PATENTS TRADEMARKS, AND RELATED RIGHTS - NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION 62-68, 269 (1975)
223. SAM RICKETSON, THE BERNE CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF LITERARY ANDARTISTIC WORKS 1886-1986 at 919-21 (1987)
224. Thomas Dreier, National Treatment, Reciprocity and Retorsion: The Case of Computer Programs and Integrated Circuits, in GATT or WIPO? NEW WAYS IN THE INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION OFINTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 63, 67-70 (F.-K. Beier & G. Schricker eds., 1989).
225. See J. H. Reichman, Intellectual Property in International Trade: Opportunities and Risks of a GATT Connection, 22 VAND. J. TRANSNAT'l L. 747, 853-57 (1989) (citing authorities). Each state must weigh the gains that might accrue from the stimulus of unilateral intellectual property incentives against the potential losses on both local and foreign markets due to more competitive, less protected producers. Conversely, states that ignore legal incentives that turn out to stimulate important new creations elsewhere may find they lag behind the technological development curve precisely because they have under-incented similar activities in their domestic economies.
226. See most recently United States - Section 211 Omnibus Appropriations Act of 1998, Report of the Appellate Body, WT/DS202/AB/R, January 2, 2002 (stating that national treatment is the cardinal principle of the international intellectual property system) [hereinafter United States - Section 211 case]. 163. See, e.g., Dreier, supra note 160. How free states are to avoid national treatment under new hybrid regimes in the face of the residual national treatment clause of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property remains to be seen. See United States - Section 211 case, supra note 162. 164. See Hugenholtz, supra note 31. 165. See, e.g., Reichman & Uhlir (2002), supra note 33. 166. See NRC, Question of Balance, supra note 22
227. Reichman & Uhlir (2002), supra note 33.
228. See Marci A. Hamilton, The TRIPS Agreement: Imperialistic, Outdated and Overprotective, 27 VAND. J. TRANSNAT'l L. 613 (1996)
229. see also A. Samuel Oddi, TRIPS-Natural Rights and a " Polite Form of Economic Imperialism " , 29 VAND. J. TRANSNAT'l L. 415 (1996).
230. See Fred Abbott, Protecting First World Assets in the Third World: Intellectual Property Negotiations in the GATT Multilateral Framework, 22 VAND. J. TRANSNAT'l LAW 689 (1989)
231. Marshall Leaffer, Protecting United Sates Intellectual Property Abroad: Toward a New Multilateralism, 76 IOWA L. REV. 273 (1991)
232. See also Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss & Andreas Lowenfeld, Two Achievements of the Uruguay Round: Putting TRIPS and Dispute Settlement Together, 37 VA. J. INT'l L. 275 (1997). The TRIPS Agreement was largely a backwards looking document that addressed measures on which a broad consensus had long been reached at the technical level, but that had remained unimplemented at the international level owing to political obstacles that only compensatory trade concessions were able to remove.
233. See generally Reichman, Legal Hybrids, supra note 36. Most scholars uncritically assume that the logic of patents and copyrights (which they know) " more or less " applies to hybrid regimes (which they know little or nothing about) ; and legislators have blindly followed the flawed historical models established in the nineteenth century, namely, the domestic design and utility model laws. I have elsewhere depicted these models as a false start that fails to solve the core problem of follow-on applications of small-scale innovation in general; and I have challenged legal theory to consider that what is most needed today is a new kind of liability rule that would operate as a floating or " portable " trade secret law. See esp. Reichman, Green Tulips, supra note 38.
234. See, e.g., James Boyle, The Second Enclosure Movement and the Construction of the Public Domain, paper presented at the Conference on the Public Domain, Duke University, November 9-11, 2001 (publication forthcoming 2002)
235. Yochai Benkler, Freedom in the Commons: Towards a Political Economy of Information, Second Annual Meredith and Kip Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property, Duke University, March 26, 2002
236. See also JAMES BOYLE, SHAMANS, SOFTWARE AND SPLEENS: LAW AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY (1996)
237. LAWRENCE Lessig, THE FUTURE OF IDEAS: THE FATE OF THE COMMONS IN A CONNECTED WORLD (2001).
238. See, e.g., Heald, supra note 39
239. Benkler (1999), supra note 11
240. see also Hamilton, supra note 39.
241. See supra note 136 and accompanying text.
242. See esp. David Lange, Recognizing the Public Domain, 44 LAW & COMTEMP. PROBS. 147 (1981)
243. Jessica Litman, The Public Domain, 39 EMORY L. J. (1990)
244. Neil Weinstock Netanel, Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society, 106 YALE L. J. 283 (1996). See generally Papers presented at the Conference on the Public Domain, Duke University, November 9-11, 2001 (publication forthcoming 2002).
245. See Maurer, supra note 22.
246. See supra text accompanying notes 160-167.
247. See Geneva Phonograms Convention, supra note 150.
248. INTERNATIONAL TREATIES ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 451 (Marshall A. Leaffer ed., 1997).
249. See International Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms, and Broadcasting Organizations, opened for signature October 26, 1961, 496 U. N. T. S. 43 [hereinafter Rome Convention]
250. See also WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTYORGANIZATION, GUIDE TO THE ROME CONVENTION AND TO THE PHONOGRAMS CONVENTION (1981).
251. See Rome Convention, supra note 178, arts. 5, 10-12.
252. See Geneva Phonograms Convention, supra note150, art. 2 (obliging each contracting state to " protect producers of phonograms who are nationals of other Contracting States against the making of duplicates without the consent of the producer and against the importation of such duplicates " .). Only duplicates intended for public distribution are actionable. See id.
253. See Geneva Phonograms Convention, supra note150, arts. 2-3.
254. See Rome Convention, supra note 178, arts. 5, 16.
255. See Geneva Phonograms Convention, supra note 150, art. 2.
256. See id., art. 3
257. LEAFFER, supra note 177, at 451.
258. See Geneva Phonograms Convention, supra note 150, art. 2.
259. Id., arts. 6, 6 (a) - (c).
260. See, e.g., Reichman & Uhlir (1999), supra note 19.
261. See supra note 108 and accompanying text.
262. See Geneva Phonograms Convention, supra note 150, art. 4.
263. See supra notes 36, 38, 123 and accompanying text.
264. See supra note 180. Nothing would impede the developed countries from pressing for such a minimalist regime to figure as an effort to clarify the inchoate obligations of states under art. 10 bis (2) of the Paris Convention. See Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, done March 20, 1883, as last revised July 14, 1967, 21 U. S. T. 1583, 828 U. N. T. S. 305, art. 10 bis (2).
265. Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15, at 164.
266. Cf., e.g., TRIPS Agreement, supra note 1, art. 39.
267. See supra note 72.
268. Cf. Freno, supra note 147, at 225
269. Bastian, supra note 147, at 463.
270. See supra note 70.
271. The European Commission should understand that its own interests are best served by such a cooperative approach. See supra text accompanying notes 165-66 (discussing the E. U. dependence on massive imports of data from the U. S., especially data provided by U. S. government agencies at low, marginal costs of delivery), and that neither country stands to gain from damaging each other's basic research and development prospects.
272. North American Free Trade Agreement Between the Government of the United States, the Government of Canada, and the Government of the United Mexican States, December 17, 1992, 32 I. L. M. 289 (1993).
273. See, e.g., Chalton, supra note133; but see Hugenholtz, supra note 31 (discussing " spin off " defense in Netherlands case law).
274. See supra notes 103-04 and accompanying text.
275. See, e.g., Reichman & Samuelson, supra note 15, at 139-145.
276. See supra note 123 and accompanying text.
277. See generally Reichman, Green Tulips, supra note 38. This solution is not to be conceptualized as a " compulsory license " , because it does not cut back upon any exclusive property right to make follow-on applications in the first place. Rather, the right to compensatory liability becomes an entitlement, but one that does not include the right to hold out or otherwise prevent second comers from borrowing the originator's data for purposes of follow-on investments, in return for compensatory contributions to the first comer's own costs of research and development.
278. See, e.g., Maureen O'Rourke, supra note 142.
279. See, e.g., Reichman & Franklin, supra note 27
280. Lemley, supra note 28.
281. Cf., e.g., Frederick M. Abbott, " The TRIPS Agreement, Access to Essential Medicines and the Doha Ministerial Conference " , Occasional Paper 7, prepared for the Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva (2001)
282. Frederick M. Abbott, " Compulsory Licensing for Public Health Needs: The TRIPS Agenda at the WTO After the Doha Declaration on Public Health " , Occasional Paper 9, prepared for the Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva (2001).
283. Cf. Frederick M. Abbott, First Report (Final) to the International Trade Law Committee of the International Law Association on the Subject of Parallel Importation, 1 J. I. E. L. 607 (1998). Whether importing countries that had opted for a liability rule sounding in unfair competition law could, in good faith and without some logical incoherence, strictly apply a " first sale " doctrine against countries that adopted an exclusive property right remains to be evaluated.
284. See supra text accompanying notes 176-93. While contractual, technical, and legal sanctions can restrict such activities when they transpire within a given territory, they cannot necessarily regulate activities in third countries with different regulatory frameworks and different needs to access data from abroad.
285. See TRIPS Agreement, supra note 1, arts. 8, 40.
286. See Ministerial Declaration, Interaction Between Trade and Competition Policy, ¶23, WT/MIN (01)/DEC/1, adopted at Doha WTO Ministerial, November 14, 2001.
287. Carefully elaborated proposals along these lines are incorporated into H. R. 1858, supra note 72, the proposed unfair competition model developed in the U. S., and their incorporation into an umbrella treaty at the international level would constitute a real accomplishment. See supra notes 112-13 and accompanying text.
288. See TRIPS Agreement, supra note 1, arts. 8, 30-31, 40; Canada-Patent Protection of Pharmaceutical Products, Report of the Panel, WT/DS114/R, March 17, 2000.
289. See Reichman & Uhlir (2002), supra note 33
290. Bob Davis, The Outlook - Why Europe Trails U. S. in High Tech Innovation, WALL STREET JOURNAL (April 1, 2002).
291. See, e.g., Oddi, supra note 167. Hostility to new, legislatively created legal monopolies was strong enough to cause some European countries to repeal existing patent laws and to cause others to defer the enactment of such laws. See, e.g., Fritz Machlup & Edith Penrose, The Patent Controversy in the Nineteenth Century, 10 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 1 (1950).
292. See, e.g., Boyle (2000), supra note 170
293. Lawrence Lessig, The Architecture of Innovation, paper presented at the Conference on the Public Domain, Duke University, November 9-11, 2001 (publication forthcoming 2002).
294. See, e.g., Julie E. Cohen, Lochner in Cyberspace: The New Economic Orthodoxy of " Rights Management " , 97 MICH. L. REV. 462 (1998) (criticizing this movement).
295. See generally Pamela Samuelson, Digital Information, Digital Networks, and the Public Domain, paper presented at the Conference on the Public Domain, Duke University, November 9-11, 2001 (publication forthcoming 2002).
296. See supra note 5.
297. See Reichman & Uhlir (2002), supra note 33.
298. See Boyle (2002), supra note 170.
299. See Reichman & Franklin, supra note 27.
300. See, e.g., Eisenberg & Rai, supra note 132.
301. See, e.g., Reichman & Uhlir (1999), supra note 19.
302. For proposals to this effect, see Reichman & Uhlir (2002), supra note 33.
303. See generally id.
304. See, e.g., LESSIG, FUTURE OF IDEAS, supra note 170
305. Boyle (2002), supra note 170
306. see also Lessig, supra note 215.
307. For details, see Reichman & Uhlir (2002), supra note 33.
308. See Conference on the Public Domain, Duke University, November 9-11, 2001, papers available at