Furthermore, it was emphasized that the bill avoids conferring any monopoly on facts. The proposed Treaty is based on the aforementioned proposals made by the European Community and its Member States and by the United States of America, taking into account discussions within the Committees of Experts. The scope of the proposed Treaty is laid down in the provisions of Article 1 in a manner that is fully consistent with these proposals. The protected subject matter is databases. The condition for protection is that a substantial investment has been made in the formation of the database.
Protection extends to databases in both electronic and non-electronic form.
Moreover, this wording embraces all forms or media now known or later developed. This means that databases that are made generally available to the public, commercially or otherwise, as well as databases that remain within the exclusive possession and control of their developers enjoy protection on the same footing. The protection would therefore be of a new or independent nature. Consequently, the proposed Treaty provides cumulative protection by the attachment of different rights to the database or to its contents. It should be pointed out that the proposed new protection does not replace any of the existing forms of protection that apply to databases or their contents.