Client Testimonials
"My priorities when using lawyers are excellent service, competitive rates and an in-depth experience of the legal issues facing the software industry. We chose the Waterfront Partnership over larger, more established law firms because they deliver on these priorities and, without fail, make us feel as if we are their number one client"
Simon Thorne, Finance Director, Manpower Software Plc
Database Rights
From 1998 a new right came into effect in UK, namely the database right. The aim of this legislation is to provide more certain protection than that already provided by copyright. The purpose of this new database right is to protect the investment in a database. A database right arises automatically at no cost to you.
A database will qualify for protection if the creator/owner of the database is an EEA resident and the database is a "collection of individual works, data or other materials arranged in a systematic or methodical way" and either qualitatively or quantitatively there has been a substantial investment in either the getting, checking or presenting of the contents of the database. If your database qualifies for protection then you can enforce your rights against businesses that extract or reutilise a substantial part of your database, or alternatively repeatedly extract and re-utilise an insubstantial part.
If you suspect that someone is using or copying large parts of your database or repeatedly using small parts of your database on a regular basis without your permission, we can advise whether this amounts to database right and/or copyright infringement and recommend a appropriate strategy for you, be it litigation or settlement based.