WASHINGTON — Ask anyone who has tried trawling through 1,000 matches returned by an Internet search of databases, and you’ll hear: Too much information can leave one as muddled as too little, unless it’s intelligently arranged.
The rules to protect such databases from poaching or other untoward competition have been equally murky since the Supreme Court rejected copyright protection for fact compilations in 1991. Two bills are pending in separate committees in the U.S. House of Representatives that may resolve the issues arising from the subsequent use of databases by unauthorized users.
