Copyright Protection For Databases In

India
IPLFCopyright

India has reaped the rewards of electronic trade. With increased database bytes and
memory and less use of paper bundles, it has altered how offices and workplaces
operate. A database is a term used to refer to a group of data that has been methodically
organized and recorded, either on paper or on any other type of electronic medium, like
a computer.

Nowadays, database thieves can use a variety of electronic tools to copy any database and
distribute it globally, and they can do so for a fraction of the high cost associated with
producing such products. These risks will only get worse as humanity becomes more dependent
on computers and digital information.

In the Indian scenario, protection:

India does not have a separate database protection law as the European Union does. Sui
generis protection does not exist in India because the government believes that the
Copyright Act’s current level of protection is adequate and that a need for further
protection has not yet arisen.

Every Indian citizen has the fundamental right to liberty and the right to privacy thanks
to the protections provided by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The Indian Penal
Code, 1860, prohibits data theft, and because the corporal property is included in the
definition of movable property, information stored on a computer is also covered by the
definition. Therefore, the IPC makes any theft, misappropriation, or criminal breach of
trust illegal. The Indian Contract Act may be invoked by including a separate clause in
the contract for database confidentiality.

The Information Technology Act, 2000 protects sensitive and private data in India.

The copyright of a database is safeguarded by the Copyright Act of 1957. The Indian
Copyright Act, 1957 was updated in 1994 to better protect copyright owners by
allowing them to safeguard such computer-generated work and recognizing a specific
class of computer programs as a type of literary work. Through amendments, the
definition of “literary work” has been expanded to include items like computer
databases, other tables, compilations, and soft ware. A “computer database” is included
in the definition of “literary work” under Section 2(o) of the Copyright Act.

Database creators rely on Indian copyright laws because they consider the database to
be a literary collection. As India has accepted both the TRIPS Agreement and the Berne
Convention, it is crucial to exercise inventiveness when deciding which company or
database should be eligible for copyright protection. Furthermore, according to the
Copyright Act, authorship rights will always be protected, even in cutting -edge works

When establishing copyright infringement for databases, the concept of “sweat of the
brow” has been supported by Indian courts and is frequently seen as a test of ability,
work, and judgment.

The courts have ruled in numerous cases including Govindan v.

Gopalakrishna, McMillan v. Suresh Chunder Deb, and others that a compilation
produced by investing resources such as money, time, skill, and effort is a literary work
and is therefore protected by copyright. The courts defended their rulings by stating that
any creativity, no matter how minor, in a compilation was protected and that no one had
the right to take the benefits of another person’s labor for their own.

In a more recent decision, the Delhi High Court ruled that while another person is free
to make a compilation that is similar to an existing one, they do not have the authority
to take the benefits of the compilers labor and violate the copyright.

Conclusion: Finally, it should be emphasized that India needs to establish legislation

that specifies the security enjoyed by databases because of the speed at which a
technology revolution aims to build a transnational environme ne the benefits of that
compiler’s labor and violate their copyright.