Vol 7 No 1 - Roger Williams University School of Law

facts are selected, refined and arranged, their expression is morelikely to benefit from copyright protection.Because sui generis protection will create an economic barrierto the access of information, not only companies but alsodeveloping countries would inevitably face higher barriers toentry. The worldwide implementation of protective legislation fordatabases could have profound economic consequences fordeveloping countries. Because the right to exclude is inherent inintellectual property rights, “enhancing the value of theintellectual property assets of one company—or country—willnecessarily lead to increased intellectual property liability of othercompanies or countries.”110D. Term of ProtectionA further problem posed by sui generis proposals for databaseprotection is defining the term of protection. There are threepossible schemes for defining the term of protection for adatabase. The first provides static protection for a term beginningat the completion of the original edition of the database. Thesecond provides dynamic protection for the most recent edition ofthe database in its entirety. The third provides variable protectionfor the original database and subsequent additions for staggeredfixed terms.The static model protects an initial investment, but does notprovide incentives for the developer to update the compilation.The static model has an inherent bias in favor of historic data, asupdates to databases would not be protected. Dynamic protectionencourages further revision and development of a database bygranting a new term of protection for each new edition of thework. A major concern regarding dynamic protection forelectronic databases is that the term may effectively be perpetualfor frequently updated databases, unless some method ofdistinguishing between new and old material is specified.111 Thevariable model provides a fixed term of protection to the originalwork and protects new entries in future editions for a similarterm, resulting in staggered terms of protection for differententries in the same database. Protecting only those modifications110. Charles R. McManis, Intellectual Property and International Mergers andAcquisitions, 66 U. Cin. L. Rev. 1283, 1289 (1998).111. See infra note 132 and accompanying text.