In November 2004, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) delivered four judgments that materially diminished the protection available to database owners. One of those cases, that of British Horseracing Board Limited (BHB) v William Hill – the first English case to be brought under Directive 96/9/EC concerning the legal protection of databases – is expected to go back to the Court of Appeal this summer. So what are the implications of this landmark ECJ decision?
The directive, implemented in the UK by the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997, came into force on 1 January, 1998. It created a new intellectual property right in databases, the effect of which was to create a specific database right separate from that existing under copyright law.
