I am not suggesting patent-like protection. Rather, I'd argue that there is very little "independent creation" with respect to my personal database. Provided it is considered my database to begin with, information that I give on a warranty card, when I ask for credit, etc. remains mine under the proposed U.S. law. Just because a third party tries to assemble it from those sources doesn't mean it suddenly becomes free data, from a non-database source. By that line of reasoning, any protected database would lose all protection upon its publication by a licensee, so long as you copied it from the licensee and not the originator. This is not how I read the proposed law, and it is not how big database publishers would want it read. - Richard Field (Nothing in this line of argument is meant to imply that I am in favor of the proposal.) At 11:47 PM 11/21/96 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote: [my proposal snipped]
Cute, but any such proposal is almost guaranteed to allow for independent creation from a non-database source - e.g., warranty cards, info extracted from you when you ask for credit, public records, etc. For example, one comment to Article 3 of the proposed WIPO treaty on sui generis protection of databases provides:
"3.02 The protection provided does not preclude any person from independently collecting, assembling or compiling works, data or materials from any source other than a protected database."
(see http://www.loc.gov/copyright/wipo6.html for more.)
It's very unlikely that Congress (or the PTO) intends to do anything that'll screw up what's already working well for big database publishers. Your theory is similar to a patent flavor for databases, while the proposals floated out so far are much more like copyright - e.g., independent creation is OK, but copying is not, even with wide public distribution, and long protection times. With patent, independent creation is not OK, copying (the information, not the device) is encouraged/allowed, and protection time is short.