Professor Estelle Derclaye presents on the database sui generis right at Moscow conference on "Law in the Digital Era"

On 27 November 2018, Professor Estelle Derclaye presented the study she co-wrote in 2017-2018 for the European Commission on the Database Directive 96/9. The conference - "Law in the Digital Era" – was organized by the International Laboratory for IT and IP law, at the National Research University’s Higher School of Economics. The panel she spoke on was "Intellectual Property Law in the digital Era".

The title of her presentation was "Study on the Database Directive and next steps". The presentation gave an overview of the study and the European Commission's report evaluating the directive which drew on the study, as well as the current status of the revision of the directive on the re-use of public sector information (Directive 2013/37/EU) in the European Parliament (so-called "PSI directive"). The PSI directive includes an important provision envisaging its relationship with the Database Directive.

The presentation generated a lot of questions as Russia has a right similar to the EU database sui generis right and looks to the EU in this area of intellectual property law. The questions asked whether a social media network can claim the database sui generis right on its users' data, what the EU is currently doing in relation to a possible data producer's right on single pieces of data, and whether the state can charge for access to its data because it holds a sui generis right.