How open data become proprietary in the court of justice of the european union

Abstract

Database protection has become a seriously debated issue in Europe and the United States since the 1990s. In Europe, the Database Directive of 1996 offered two-tiered protection, for original and non-original databases, instituting the database maker’s sui generis right; the United States declined to change its steady position against protecting non-original databases. The Court of Justice of the European Union, interpreting the Directive, carved a narrow database right. While these decisions enjoyed universal acclaim from many theorists, suddenly in the 2015 Ryanair decision, the CJEU subtly blasted its prior database jurisprudence, highlighting contract as a means to enclose data into absolute proprietary models in a way completely unforeseeable until then. We are left behind to watch the enclosing of open data acquire a legitimization never before possible.