2/85 DATA COPYRIGHT PROTECTION

An advisory body to the Cultural Affairs Agency, which has jurisdiction over copyrights, has recommended that databases be given copyrights. If this is enacted, Japan would be the first in the world to do so. The group’s final report will be made in the Autumn of 1985. The group noted that the method of structuring and analyzing data as well as the selection of key words. etc., engenders enough creativity to be worthy of copyrights MITI, which is also in conflict with the Cultural Affairs Agency over giving protection to computer programs, and greatly dislikes other government agencies entering the information sector, which it considers its own domain, immediately announced that it was establishing its own study group to study the issue, shortly before the other groups report.

THE JAPAN LAWLETTER. February 1985. By Roderick Seeman