The Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a revised version of the Collection of Information Antipiracy Act May 20. The bill (H.R. 354) gives copyright protection to databases even when the individual contents are not in the public domain.
A number of the revisions in the bill responded to concerns expressed by library and education witnesses at a March hearing. For instance, rather than requiring harm to the “actual or potential market,” the bill now uses the phrase “primary market or a related market.” The full Judiciary Committee is expected to act on the bill shortly.
The previous day, the Consumer and Investor Access to Information Act (H.R. 1858) was introduced in the House Commerce Committee. A statement from the committee says that the alternative legislation “provides new protection to publishers of electronic databases, while ensuring that public access to information will not be limited by publishers’ asserting a proprietary right over facts and information, which historically have been part of the public domain.”
Posted May 31, 1999.