Unfortunately I had to step out of the room for a few minutes (and I also had to charge my laptop), so my notes are a litlte incomplete here.
Fabienne Brison, Sarah Turnbull, and Tillman Luder discussed case law and European Commission developments in this area. Obviously a lot of the discussion focuses on the Feist standard and the idea that most databases are compilations. We also need to spend a lot of time looking at whether data is "created" or "obtained". Issues like data mining complicate the distinctions further - the data is partially created and partially obtained. P. Hugenholtz said, even considering data mining, the question is moot because 99 out of 100 cases deal with data that is not created. He said that they are really relying on "sweat of the brow" to try to get protection.
Tillman discussed a couple of options within the legislation. The general idea is that we are taking databases out of copyright but putting back a new way to deal with these situations. Someone from the audience suggested a fourth option - forget about the new legislation entirely.
Other sessions:
- Copyright Exceptions and Defenses in the Digital Age
- Constitution and Copyright & Orphan Works
- Digital Rights Management
- P2P Filesharing (coming soon)