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Vol 7 No 1 - Roger Williams University School of Law

Vol 7 No 1 - Roger Williams University School of Law

Vol 7 No 1 - Roger Williams University School of Law

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preferred language <strong>of</strong> many business transactions, the demand ishigher for English-based databases.Between 1992 and 1998 the percentage <strong>of</strong> sites based onEnglish rose from 67% to 70%.123 The worldwide number <strong>of</strong>internet sites based on the English language is currently 65.1%.124As databases are frequently based in part on prior datacompilations, the entrenchment <strong>of</strong> English language databasesshould continue. Additionally, the two largest encyclopediaservices, Micros<strong>of</strong>t’s Encarta and the British EncyclopediaBritannica, are English-based works.Nearly half <strong>of</strong> the current 250 million Americans rely on internetbased data.125 That consideration alone accounts for the highdemand for data provided in the English language. Moreover,recent economic growth in the United States has encouragedfurther capital investment in the information technologyindustry.126 The United States is also home to many <strong>of</strong> theworld’s major s<strong>of</strong>tware producers, including AT&T, HewlettPackard, Micros<strong>of</strong>t, Motorola, IBM, GTE, Lucent Technologies andOracle. As s<strong>of</strong>tware is important to the creation <strong>of</strong> databases, theplatform on which they are created is most <strong>of</strong>ten based on EnglishB. The EU Database Directive and Its ImplementationThe EU Database Directive, promulgated on March 11, 1996,mandated implementation by all states in the European EconomicArea by January 1, 1998.127 As we have seen, the EU DatabaseDirective both defines the scope <strong>of</strong> copyright protection fordatabases and creates a new sui generis right. Consistent withArticle 10 <strong>of</strong> TRIPS, the Directive specifies that copyrightprotection extends to databases that by reason <strong>of</strong> the selection orarrangement <strong>of</strong> their contents, constitute the author’s ownintellectual creation.128 The exclusive rights granted to qualifyingdatabases largely parallel the exclusive rights granted under U.S.123. Equally significant is the numbers that underlie those percentages. In 1992,1,489 <strong>of</strong> 2,213 multimedia databases were in English. By 1998 the number <strong>of</strong>multimedia databases had risen to 28,199, <strong>of</strong> which 19,602 were in English. Id. at 31.124. Id. at 4.125. Id.126. Information Market Observatory, supra note 115, § 4.1.127. EU Database Directive, supra note 4, at art. 16, § 1.128. Id. at art. 3.

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