Estelle Derclaye (Law PhD, 2005)
Professor Estelle Derclaye recently spoke at the EIPIN International Conference on article 35 of the Data Act which maps the interaction between the database directive and the Data Act, and related recitals.
Professor Derclaye has been invited multiple times to present her research on database protection at conferences but also to students in different universities in the UK, the EU and overseas. More recently, in September 2022, she was invited to talk at the Annual conference of the ALAI where she presented the statutory and case law on the sui generis right and briefly how the Data act interfaces with it. On 4 November 2022, she spoke in more detail on article 35 of the Data Act which maps the interaction between the database directive and the Data Act, and related recitals. The talk was part of an international conference organised by EIPIN, a network of which QMUL is part, and some QMIPRI staff were also present. The purpose of the conference was to analyze the interaction between the European data package including the Data Act (DA), the DSA (Digital services act), the DMA (Digital markets act) and AI Act (artificial intelligence act) and the EU instruments in the field of intellectual property law and to determine whether there are obstacles which may hinder the achievement of the EU’s overall common objective of promoting innovation in Europe. The conference gathered the main European experts in the area.
Professor Estelle Derclaye wrote her PhD thesis at QMIPRI and graduated in 2006. The thesis led to her book The legal protection of databases: A comparative analysis (Elgar, 2008) which compares EU and US law on the protection of databases by several rights i.e. copyright, the sui generis right for databases, unfair competition law, contract and the legal protection of technological protection measures. The book became a reference in the field and in 2017-2018, she was involved in the study on the database directive 96/9/EC written at the behest of DG Connect (European Commission) which led to its evaluation report issued in April 2018.
While the Commission decided in the end not to amend the database directive, it issued its ‘data package’, part of which includes the Data Act, a Regulation proposal focusing on facilitating the access and sharing of data produced by IoT products and services, which is being debated now in the EU institutions. Part of the Data Act involves the interface between the database directive and the data act. The two main purposes of the new proposals for European Digital Acts or data package are to foster innovation in Europe and to strengthen the competitiveness of European companies.
You can see the conference’s programme here. The conference was also streamed live online and the recordings are available below:
Morning session and afternoon-evening session.