Artificial Intelligence and databases in the age of big machine data

Citation

Noto La Diega G (2018) Artificial Intelligence and databases in the age of big machine data. In: Ubertazzi LC (ed.) Aida. Annali italiani del diritto d'autore, della cultura e dello spettacolo, XXVIII. Giuffre.

Abstract
This paper deals with those databases where Artificial Intelligence technologies are used to obtain, verify, or present the database’s contents (‘AI databases’). The overarching research question is whether AI databases can be protected under the copyright and sui generis regimes provided by the Database Directive. The alleged inadequacy of the sui generis right for the data economy and, in particular, for machine-generated data led the European Parliament to call on the Commission to abolish said right and the Commission to propose the introduction of a data producer’s right as a new property that would have done what the sui generis right had been unable to. It is this paper’s contention that, contrary to popular belief, the sui generis right is fit for AI databases and that a different solution would lead to an overprotection of said subject matter by contractual means. The sui generis right may be the best, if not the only, way to protect AI ‘authorial’ works. Indeed, even if AI works currently fall outside the scope of copyright law for lack of originality, they could nonetheless be protected if part of a database. Thus, thanks to AI, the sui generis right may become more important than it ever was.