Copyright Protection For Databases In India

India has reaped the rewards of electronic trade. With increased database bytes and memory and less use of paper bundles, it has altered how offices and workplaces operate. A database is a term used to refer to a group of data that has been methodically organized and recorded, either on paper or on any other type of electronic medium, like a computer. A lot of electronic databases’ creators are willing to accept the risk and obligation of gathering a lot of raw data and then having to use it, despite the fact that the need for databases like phone directories is expanding in the business world as a whole. They are a powerful search engine that makes information easily accessible. The company bases its entire business model on the purchase of such a database and earns money from advertising, royalties, or client payments.

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Databases and the Need for Protection:

Nowadays, database thieves can use a variety of electronic tools to copy any database and distribute it globally, and they can do so for a fraction of the high cost associated with producing such products. These risks will only get worse as humanity becomes more dependent on computers and digital information and as inventive new ways for technology to reproduce and distribute data products are developed.

In the Indian scenario, protection:

India does not have a separate database protection law as the European Union does. Sui generis protection does not exist in India because the government believes that the Copyright Act’s current level of protection is adequate and that a need for further protection has not yet arisen.

Every Indian citizen has the fundamental right to liberty and the right to privacy thanks to the protections provided by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The Indian Penal Code, 1860, prohibits data theft, and because the corporal property is included in the definition of movable property, information stored on a computer is also covered by the definition. Therefore, the IPC makes any theft, misappropriation, or criminal breach of trust illegal. The Indian Contract Act may be invoked by including a separate clause in the contract for database confidentiality.

The Information Technology Act, 2000 protects sensitive and private data in India. The Information Technology Act’s Section 66E outlines the penalties for violating privacy laws, among other things. In addition to this, numerous other sections address various facets of upholding database rights.

The copyright of a database is safeguarded by the Copyright Act of 1957. The Indian Copyright Act, 1957 was updated in 1994 to better protect copyright owners by allowing them to safeguard such computer-generated work and recognizing a specific class of computer programs as a type of literary work. Through amendments, the definition of “literary work” has been expanded to include items like computer databases, other tables, compilations, and software. A “computer database” is included in the definition of “literary work” under Section 2(o) of the Copyright Act.

Database creators rely on Indian copyright laws because they consider the database to be a literary collection. As India has accepted both the TRIPS Agreement and the Berne Convention, it is crucial to exercise inventiveness when deciding which company or database should be eligible for copyright protection.

Furthermore, according to the Copyright Act, authorship rights will always be protected, even in cutting-edge works. The Indian Copyright Act does not contain a definition of creativity, and the Indian courts have not taken a definite stance on the issue. Every situation is typically analyzed in light of its own particular facts and circumstances.

When establishing copyright infringement for databases, the concept of “sweat of the brow” has been supported by Indian courts and is frequently seen as a test of ability, work, and judgment.

The courts have ruled in numerous cases including Govindan v. Gopalakrishna, McMillan v. Suresh Chunder Deb, and others that a compilation produced by investing resources such as money, time, skill, and effort is a literary work and is therefore protected by copyright. The courts defended their rulings by stating that any creativity, no matter how minor, in a compilation was protected and that no one had the right to take the benefits of another person’s labor for their own.

In a more recent decision, the Delhi High Court ruled that while another person is free to make a compilation that is similar to an existing one, they do not have the authority to take the benefits of that compiler’s labor and violate their copyright. The Court ruled that copyright protection must be given for a creative and original way of gathering facts without taking into account the creative ways in which those facts were actually realized. According to the US Supreme Court’s ruling in the Feist case, the coordination, choice, or arrangement of the subjects included in the database must show “a modicum of creativity” in order for the copyright to be protected.

Conclusion: Finally, it should be emphasized that India needs to establish legislation that specifies the security enjoyed by databases because of the speed at which a technology revolution aims to build a transnational environment. In the absence of further safeguards for non-creative databases, the legal environment required for the growth of electronic commerce can only be supported by clearly defined copyright and database rights.

Author: Basudev Bhaktiranjan Behera, a Law Student at National Law University Odisha, in case of any queries please contact/write back to us at support@ipandlegalfilings.com or   IP & Legal Filing.