Highest Court: Public databases are still sui-generis protected (9 April 2003)
Highest Court of Austria (OGH)
Plaintiff: Austrian Ministry of Justice (BMJ)
Defendent: CMD and Compass Publishing House
The Ministry of Justice (BMJ) sued in 2001 the online-directory company COMPASS for having infringed the copyright and sui-generis-right on the official company database of Austria. This dispute dates back to more than 15 years and only deals with the commercial reuse of PSI, not with the distribution of the official database by 5 private distribution agents.
The Highest Court of Austria ruled on the 9th of April 2002 as follows:
a)The database is not treated as a public register (dissenting opinion by literature).
b)The exemption of public registers from copyright is not applied in analogiam to the sui-generis-rights. The official BMJ-database therefore enjoys the benefits of unlimited sui-generis-protection (dissenting opinion by majority of literature, both in Austria and Germany).
c) The import and storage of data of the BMJ-database on the private database of Compass is seen as act of reproduction.
Description (original)
Es muss als Missbrauch einer marktbeherrschenden Stellung (§35 Abs1 KartG) angesehen werden, wenn dem Hersteller einer Datenbank, der diese nur unter der Bedingung wirtschaftlich sinnvoll betreiben kann, dass ihm zur Aktualisierung notwendige Veränderungsdaten zur Verfügung gestellt werden, vom monopolistischen Hersteller jener Datenbank, aus der allein die Veränderungsdaten bezogen werden können, ein würde.