Resnik David B
Department of Medical Humanities, 2S-17 Brody Building, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2003 Jul;9(3):301-18. doi: 10.1007/s11948-003-0027-8.
This paper develops three arguments for increasing the strength of database protection under U.S. law. First, stronger protections would encourage private investment in database development, and private databases have many potential benefits for science and industry. Second, stronger protections would discourage extensive use of private licenses to protect databases and would allow for greater public control over database laws and policies. Third, stronger database protections in the U.S. would harmonize U.S. and E.U. laws and would thus enhance international trade, commerce, and research. The U.S. should therefore follow the European example and develop two tiers of protection for databases: 1) protection for creative databases under copyright law; 2) protection for non-creative databases through a special type of sui generis protection. In order to balance private control of data and public access to data, sui generis protections should define a "fair use" exemption that permits some unauthorized extraction of data for private, educational, and research purposes, provided that such extraction does not adversely impact the economic value of the database.
本文提出了三条论据，以支持加强美国法律对数据库的保护力度。其一，更强有力的保护措施将鼓励私人投资数据库开发，而私人数据库对科学和产业具有诸多潜在益处。其二，更强有力的保护措施将抑制广泛使用私人许可来保护数据库，并能使公众对数据库法律和政策拥有更大的控制权。其三，美国加强数据库保护将使美国法律与欧盟法律相协调，从而促进国际贸易、商业和研究。因此，美国应效仿欧洲，为数据库制定两层保护：1）依据版权法对具有创造性的数据库进行保护；2）通过一种特殊的特别保护类型对非创造性数据库进行保护。为平衡数据的私人控制权与公众对数据的访问权，特别保护应界定一种“合理使用”豁免，允许在某些情况下，为私人、教育和研究目的对数据进行未经授权的提取，前提是这种提取不会对数据库的经济价值产生不利影响。
