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19 Legal Information Alert 1 (2000)

handle is hein.lbr/leinfal0019 and id is 1 raw text is: What's new in legal publications, databases, and research techniques Volume 19, No. 1 January 2000 Contents 1999 Legislative Review: The Battle of the Database Bills For Your Information New Sources Database Report 4 6 16 Publishers 19 Index 19 1999 Legislative Review: The Battle of the Database Bills by Samuel E. Trosow In my previous legislative review, Copyright and the 105th Congress (Legal Informa- tion Alert, vol. 18, no. 1, January 1999), I ended with the good news that H.R. 2652, the Collection of Information Antipiracy Act, was not enacted into law. While the House passed the bill in May 1998, it died in the Senate. Then, in a last-minute maneuver, its proponents tried an end-run around full Senate consideration by attaching it as a rider to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1999, but the Conference Committee dropped the database title from its final version. This was the second Congress in which attempts to extend copyright-type protections to collections of data and facts failed. The Database Investment and Intellectual Property Antipiracy Act of 1996 (H.R. 3531, 104th Congress) had not even been reported out of committee. Yet Another Round Reincarnated in the current 106th Congress as H.R. 354, the database bill continues to be opposed by a broad coalition of library, education, research, and high-technology inter- ests, who say the measure will adversely affect the public's access to information and stifle technological innovation. However, in 1999, legal publishers were even more adamant in their quest for new legislation, as their judicial strategy proved unsuccessful. In November 1998, the Second Circuit rejected West's claims of copyright on its page numbering and factual content of its opinion collections (Matthew Bender & Co. v. West Publishing, 158 F.3d 674, cert. den. 522 U.S. 3732). The court relied on Feist Publica- tions v. Rural Telephone, 299 U.S. 340 (1991), in which the Supreme Court held that a compilation of facts must have a modicum of creativity in its selection, coordination, or arrangement in order to qualify for copyright protection. Like its predecessors, H.R. 354 is an attempt to circumvent the Feist decision and extend the scope of copyright-like restrictions to facts and data. Also, like its predecessors, H.R. 354 seeks to establish an unprecedented level of proprietary rights in collections of information, complete with civil and criminal penalties for unauthorized use, even by individuals who are not competing with the database provider. Objections Rain on Bill Among the many objections to H.R. 354: * It is over-broad in scope and departs from the current intellectual property frame- continued on page 2 What's new in legal publications, databases, and research techniques Volume 19, No. 1 January 2000

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