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1 1 (May 21, 1998)

handle is hein.crs/crsaavm0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 98-487 A May 21, 1998 Collections of Information Antipiracy Act: Summary of H.R. 2652 Douglas Reid Weimer Legislative Attorney American Law Division Summary H.R. 2652, 105th Congress, 1 Sess., proposes to create a new body of copyright law which would be entitled Misappropriation of Collections of Information. The bill would impose liability on anyone who extracted or used in commerce all or a substantial portion of a collection of information in such a way so as to harm the market for the product or service that contained the information and is offered in commerce. The database collection would be protected for a term of fifteen years. The bill provides for civil and criminal remedies and sets time limitations for bringing actions for misappropriation. The bill was introduced on October 9, 1997 by Representative Coble and reported to the House with amendments by the House Committee on Judiciary on March 24, 1998, H.Rept. 105-525. Background In 1991, the Supreme Court rejected the sweat of the brow theory for copyright protection in Feist Communications v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc.1 The case involved the protection of telephone listings that had been compiled through great effort.2 The Court determined that the telephone listings lacked sufficient originality to merit copyright protection, in spite of the fact that considerable time, effort, and expense (sweat of the brow) had been involved in the compilation of the listings. As a result of this decision, limited compilation copyright protection has been available for computer databases) 1 499 U.S. 340 (1991). 2 See CRS Report No. 91-552, Copyright and Compilations of Fact, Feist Publications v. Rural Telpehone Service Co. ' Some databases may consist of extensive lists of commands which have limited creativity and therefore currently have limited copyright protection available under the Feist doctrine. Courts have scrutinized the copyrightability of software in light of the Feist principles. See (continued...) Congressional Research Service **** The Library of Congress CRS Report for Congress Received through the CRS Web

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