Artificial Intelligence and Database Protection: Issues and Perspectives

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, in general, the exploitation of digital data raise challenging issues regarding the scope of database protection, the interpretation and application of the relevant rules in light of new computational uses, and the growing demand for access to and sharing of digital data and databases. Indeed, the significant technological, economic, and regulatory changes of the last decade have intensified the clash of interests between, on one hand, the accumulation and exclusive use of data to gain of competitive advantages, and, on the other hand, the need for data access and re-utilization to foster the development of innovative services (such as those based on AI). Exclusive rights granted for the protection of databases may, in fact, represent a barrier to accessing and reusing the data they contain. Therefore, it was inevitable that interpretative issues and reform proposals would arise concerning the exclusive rights over databases, nearly three decades after their ‘harmonization’ at the European Union (EU) level. The protection of databases does not represent the only (nor – according to some Authors – perhaps the primary) source of regulation of the network of economic dynamics revolving around the exploitation of digital data, especially for training and developing AI systems. However, such rights may gain an increased importance as they are called upon to regulate the protection of intellectual efforts and business investments in the activities of data management and organization, as well as, correspondingly, the areas of their free uses. In the era of Generative AI, compilations of organized, selected, structured, (quality) datasets are acquiring increasing value. After a brief description of the new questions raised by the computational uses of digital data, especially within the context of AI development, this paper will focus on some selected issues, namely: (i) the interpretative problems regarding the scope and the content of the exclusive protection(s), with specific attention to sui generis right and (ii) the issues regarding the free uses of databases and the reuses of data contained therein, by focusing on the interpretation of the text and data mining exceptions and limitations applied to copyright and sui generis right over databases. The goal of the paper is to shed light on new possible perspectives, interpretations and eventual reforms that have not yet been addressed by the national and the EU legislators.