Database rights – ownership as between agent and principal
The Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations 1997 provide that the owner of a database is the person who invests or assumes the risk in creating the database. Where a database is created by an employee, it is owned by the employer, but what about where the database is created by an agent?
In the case of Cureton v Mark Insulations, 3 March 2006, the High Court decided that, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, the agent, and not the principal, should own the rights in a database created by it in the course of the agency. Had the principal specifically commissioned the agent to produce the database, it might have been able to argue that the agent held any rights on trust for the principal, but that was not the case here. This demonstrates the importance of specifying in a written contract who will own the rights in anything produced during the relationship.
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