A London legal firm, Tarlo Lyons, has warned that companies might find their commercial databases are unprotected in law.

A recent European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling means that databases with commercially sensitive information, will only be protected if the administrators can prove they have spent time and money on managing the resource.

The case in question involved the British Horseracing Board (BHB) and bookmaker William Hill. BHB had accused William of taking information from the database without a licence.

However the ECJ ruled that the information in the database did not require much effort to manage the information in it. Consequently it could not be commercially protected using intellectual property law.

In the firing line is the market for databases with sales leads, marketing data.

Tarlo Lyons advise the following:-

Invest in the verification and presentation of your database, and keep a record of this investment.

Seek to assert your database rights by including a database rights notice in any electronic or hard copy of the database.

Label your database "confidential" and ensure that anyone who has access to it is bound by certain terms of use.

Consider whether it is possible to encrypt or technically protect the data.

Prevent third parties from having access to the entire contents and restrict unauthorised use.

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