ALAWON v5n81 (November 14, 1996) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/alawon/alawon-v5n81.txt ------------------- ALWN581.ASC follows -------------------- ================================================================= ALAWON Volume 5, Number 81 ISSN 1069-7799 November 14, 1996 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (89 lines) NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONS TAKE STAND AGAINST PREMATURE TREATY PROPOSALS TO RESTRICT ACCESS TO "DATABASES," BROADLY DEFINED _________________________________________________________________ NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONS TAKE STAND AGAINST PREMATURE TREATY PROPOSALS TO RESTRICT ACCESS TO "DATABASES," BROADLY DEFINED In its landmark 1991 fair use decision in the Feist case, the U.S. Supreme Court expressly held that telephone "white pages" had not required sufficient creativity to compile that they merited copyright protection, even though their compiler had expended substantial time and effort in their production and distribution. Legislation introduced in the House of Representatives very late in the last Congress (H.R. 3531), however, would have extended substantial protection to all such "non-creative" databases and would have very broadly defined almost any collection of facts that took time and or money to collect as a "database". Although no similar bill was introduced in the Senate, and no hearing was held on the House proposal, the United States also advanced similar proposals for potential adoption by the member nations of the World Intellectual Property Organization at this December's upcoming Diplomatic Conference in Geneva. Because this sweeping new international protection of all databases (those protected by and currently outside of copyright) had received virtually no domestic discussion, and because its sweeping character could cripple basic academic and scientific research if adopted internationally this December, the Presidents of National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and national Institute of Medicine recently wrote to Secretary of Commerce Mickey Kantor urging that the United States work to assure that WIPO did not act precipitously to adopt the proposed database treaty in its present form. ALA -- in active coordination with its colleagues at the Association of Research Libraries, American Association of Law Libraries, Medical Library Association and Special Libraries Association -- was instrumental in bringing this critical issue to the Presidents' attention. Last week, in response to an immediate deadline established by the White House, ALA and its four association partners underscored and amplified the Presidents' concerns in a letter signed by the five associations' primary representatives. The fundamental message of that correspondence was as follows: "The changes to intellectual property law which [the database treaty] proposal would facilitate are so sweeping that the U.S. delegation's support for the Draft Treaty should be withdrawn until a complete and thorough national discussion of the merits and/or drawbacks of any related intellectual property proposal are carefully debated and considered." While no official announcement has been made, policy makers at the highest levels of the Executive Branch appear to have recognized that action on the new database treaty by WIPO this December would be premature. In other WIPO-related news, Adam Eisgrau, ALA's Washington Office Legislative Counsel, will attend at least two weeks of the three-week Diplomatic Conference in Geneva as an official member of the International Federation of Library Association's (IFLA's) delegation and as the credentialed representative of the Educators' Ad Hoc Committee on Copyright Law. _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname]" to . ALAWON archives gopher.ala.org; select ALA Washington Office Newsline. Visit our Web site at . ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Contributors: Adam Eisgrau Deirdre Herman All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. =================================================================