The European Court of Justice has confirmed in a recent ruling that for the purposes of ascertaining whether the right to a database has been infringed by ‘extraction’ of database information, extraction is not confined to the physical copying of the data in the database.
The decisive criterion is an act of transfer; the means is immaterial. For example, an on-screen consultation of a database, following which a sample of the information was transferred, is capable of constituting an “extraction”. This is substantially less than most people would consider as constituting the 'copying' of a database.
Clients who make use of publicly-visible databases should be aware that their use may constitute a breach of Data Protection law.
If you need advice on any aspect of Data Protection law, please contact us.
We would like to thank you for the superb work and attention to detail that has gone into our dispute with the council so far!