Database Protection Act – What You Should Know

A wide range of entities use databases today. These include analysts, entrepreneurs seeking to optimize marketing processes within their companies, as well as ordinary users looking for information on a specific topic. To prevent misuse related to the exploitation of databases, the legislator decided to regulate their use by statute.
What exactly constitutes a database under the law? What does the Database Protection Act provide for? How does the legal protection of databases work? Can a database be used without the creator’s consent?
This article addresses these questions in detail. We invite you to read on carefully.

Legal Protection of Databases – Models of Protection

Polish law provides for so-called sui generis protection of databases, the framework of which is set out in the Act of 27 July 2001 on the Protection of Databases.
What does this mean in practice? According to Article 1 of the Act, databases enjoy protection independent of the protection granted under the Act of 4 February 1994 on Copyright and Related Rights.
Thus, under Polish law, there are two parallel models of protection:

• Copyright protection – applicable to databases that qualify as a “work” within the meaning of copyright law,
• Sui generis protection – established by the Database Protection Act, covering databases that do not meet the criteria of a “work” under copyright law.

Below, we focus exclusively on the first model of protection.

What Is a Database Under the Act?

Pursuant to Article 2(1)(1) of the Act, a database is defined as:

“a collection of data or any other materials or elements arranged according to a specific system or method, individually accessible in any manner, including by electronic means, requiring a substantial investment – in terms of quality or quantity – for the purpose of compiling, verifying, or presenting its contents.”

From this definition, we can identify four key characteristics of a database:

1. Existence of a collection of data (or other materials and elements) –
   The legislator deliberately adopted a broad scope of protection. A collection may include, for example, legal acts, literary works, sounds, or numbers.
2. A method of data organization established according to the creator’s chosen criterion –
   The collection must not be random or unstructured. No specific organizational form is required; it may be alphabetical, chronological, or otherwise systematic.
3. A developed method of access to the database –
   Access may be electronic (e.g., when the database is published online) or analog (e.g., a manually compiled list).
4. A substantial investment made to compile, verify, or present the contents –
   Regarding what qualifies as a substantial investment, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) clarified that

“The concept of investment associated with obtaining the contents of a database refers to the resources devoted to seeking out existing materials and collecting them in the database. It does not include resources used to create the materials that make up the contents of the database. In the context of preparing a football match schedule, therefore, this concept does not cover resources used to determine the dates, times, or pairings of teams.”
(Judgment of the CJEU of 9 November 2004, Fixtures Marketing Ltd v. Oy Veikkaus Ab, Case C-46/02).

Scope of Legal Protection

According to the Database Protection Act, protection is granted to the producer—that is, the entity that assumes the investment risk in creating the database (Article 2(1)(4)).
Under Article 6(1), the producer enjoys the exclusive and transferable right to extract and reuse the whole or a substantial part (in qualitative or quantitative terms) of the database’s contents.

• Extraction means transferring data to any medium (e.g., a CD).
• Re-use occurs when the producer makes the database publicly available, such as by publishing it online.

The protection lasts 15 years, counted from the year following the database’s completion.
However, if the database is made publicly available within that period, the protection expires 15 years after the year of first public disclosure (Article 10).

Producer’s Claims in Case of Infringement

If the producer’s exclusive right to extract or reuse data is infringed, they may demand from the infringer:

• cessation of the infringement,
• removal of its effects,
• compensation for damages,
• surrender of profits obtained through the infringement.

Lawful Use of Databases – Permitted Use

Finally, it should be noted that—similarly to copyright law—the Database Protection Act introduces limitations on the producer’s monopoly regarding the use of their database.
Under Article 7, a producer of a publicly accessible database may not prohibit a lawful user from extracting or reusing an insubstantial part, whether in terms of quality or quantity, for any purpose.

An example of lawful use would be when a user of a Polish language corpus (a type of database) retrieves information about a specific word to conduct linguistic analysis.