Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2008:401
Date: 2008-07-10
Language of the case: German
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Right of establishment;Intellectual, industrial and commercial property;Approximation of laws;Freedom to provide services
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Germany

Summary of the Judgment Approximation of laws – Legal protection of databases – Directive 96/9 (European Parliament and Council Directive 96/9, Art. 7) The transfer of material from a protected database to another database following an on‑screen consultation of the first database and an individual assessment of the material contained in that first database is capable of constituting an ‘extraction’, within the meaning of Article 7 of Directive 96/9 on the legal protection of databases, to the extent that that operation amounts to the transfer of a substantial part, evaluated qualitatively or quantitatively, of the contents of the protected database, or to transfers of insubstantial parts which, by their repeated or systematic nature, would have resulted in the reconstruction of a substantial part of those contents. The concept of extraction, within the meaning of Article 7 of that directive, must be understood as referring to any unauthorised act of appropriation of the whole or a part of the contents of a database. The decisive criterion is to be found in the existence of an act of ‘transfer’ of all or part of the contents of the database concerned to another medium, whether of the same nature as the medium of that database or of a different nature. Such a transfer implies that all or part of the contents of a database are to be found in a medium other than that of the original database, whatever the nature or form of the mode of operation used. (see paras 34-36, 60, operative part)