Dutch court rules that a newspaper does not constitute database

The case was brought by Wegener and PCM, who are the publishers of several major newspapers in the Netherlands. The two companies claimed that Hunter Select, a job search web site provider, had infringed their database rights by copying excerpts of job advertisements published on their newspapers’ web sites and circulating them on its own site.

In its decision on 18th July 2002, the court dismissed the publishers’ claims, ruling that by copying and posting the adverts, Hunter Select was not infringing their database rights.

The court reasoned that under the Dutch Database Act 1999, which implemented the EU Database Directive, a newspaper does not constitute a database and therefore its provisions did not apply to the case.

Wegener and PCM have stated that they will appeal the decision.

The Dutch ruling contrasts with recent rulings in Germany and Denmark. In Copenhagen last month, the Bailiff’s Court applied the Database Directive to order a news web site to remove hyperlinks, which had been created without the permission of the publishers, to certain newspapers’ on-line articles.

In a similar case in Germany, a Munich court ruled that a news search engine which linked directly to newspapers’ on-line stories, bypassing the web sites’ homepages, violated EU database law.

The Database Directive, which applies to both electronic and non-electronic databases, grants copyright protection to database creators in the selection and arrangement of the information contained in databases.

This right is regardless of whether the database creator owns the copyright in the information contained within the database. The Directive gives creators the right to control or prohibit temporary reproduction of all or substantial amounts of the database content but the extraction of “insubstantial amounts of data” is permitted.

It appears, however, that the definition of “database” has created complexities for courts in Europe.