The eligibility requirements for legal protection of publicly accessible datasets

ABSTRACT This article proceeds on the assumption that Chinese legislators are likely to choose special legislation of a property rights regime to protect publicly accessible datasets. Under such legislation, data collectors would be granted limited exclusive rights (right of public communication). It is argued that there should be three principal eligibility requirements in relation to such datasets, namely: the data entries in a dataset are made public; it contains a substantial number of data entries; and, it reflects a substantial collection cost to the collector. Through these elements, the special property rights legislation can be connected consistently with the existing trade secret protection system and copyright law. It can be distinguished from the US-style hot news doctrine and EU-style database directive to achieve different legislative purposes and effectively balance the interests of data collectors, competitors, and the public.