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Requirement of originality for compilation works completed using databases built by computer programs
I. Overview
Article 7-1 of the Copyright Act provides: "A compilation work is a work formed by the creative selection and arrangement of materials, and shall be protected as an independent work." In practice, there has always been some controversy as to how original must compilation works be for them to be protected under the Copyright Act.
The Intellectual Property and Commercial Court's Criminal Judgment 113-Xing-Zhi-Shang-Yi-Zi-35 dated 16 January 2025 determined that a database utilizing computer programs to identify, classify and arrange data on real estate properties is not original and therefore not considered a compilation work protected under Article 7-1 of the Copyright Act.
II. Facts of the case
The facts of the case are briefly as follows: Through research and development, the Complainant has developed a computer program with the patent "House Search System and Method." With the computer program's identification system, the Complainant extracted text, images, and geographic location data from webpages and government-published actual price registration data and fed them into an electronic online database. The Complainant also used a community identifier to cross-reference the collected data on community information and then proofread manually.
The Complainant published the electronic online database it developed on the disputed webpage for users to use without charge. However, the Complainant later learned that the Defendant's company and its responsible person used a web crawler program it developed to automatically copy the data from the disputed webpage for research on mail sorting automation systems.
III. The grounds for judgement
Taiwan Taipei District Court's Criminal Case Judgment 112-Zhi-Yi-Zi-27 (the original judgment) pointed out that a compilation work must demonstrate a certain degree of creativity and the author's personality in the selection and arrangement of data to enjoy copyright. In this case, the data sources of the Complainant's disputed electronic online database include government-published actual price registration data and data published by several real estate agency websites. Even though the amount of data copied was tremendous, the database merely mechanically extracted, analyzed, compared, and proofread the factual information from the original data before generating data—no thought is embodied in the selection and arrangement of data. Compared to other real estate websites, it also lacks unique creativity or ingenuity. Therefore, it was considered a factual database presenting objective data and does not meet the requirement of creativity. As for the proofreading done manually by the Complainant, the court also determined that simple proofreading is unrelated to the selection and arrangement of data and does not present an author's intellectual or emotional substance.
The Intellectual Property and Commercial Court's Criminal Judgment 113-Xing-Zhi-Shang-Yi-Zi-35 affirmed the original judgment, finding it to be free of errors. It further pointed out that the protection of copyright lies in whether the expression has originality and is unrelated to the "sweat of the brow" doctrine. Without originality, even if the creator expends significant time, resources, and effort, the completed work is still not protected by copyright.
The court further noted that there were already many real estate data websites with similar functions before the establishment of the Complainant's disputed electronic online database, and the data sources for the database also included other real estate data websites. The court therefore determined that the database was not an original work independently completed by the Complainant and lacked "originality."