Enabling Science Through Data Access in the Face of Increasing Protectionism

A Statement by the WFS Permanent Monitoring Panel for Climatology

Erice - 19 August 1999

Basic scientific research is responsible for much of the great progress made by the world community in the natural and social sciences during the last century. Society uses the fruits of scientific research to expand the world's base of knowledge and applies that knowledge in many ways to create wealth and improve the human condition. Scientific research therefore is an investment in the public interest and social and economic development.

One of the cornerstones of research is the full and open availability of scientific data on an international basis. In the course of study, scientists frequently draw upon multiple databases (diverse sets of data) to create a new database and to produce new results. This synthesis of data is an essential part of scientific progress. Science is a co-operative enterprise and data sharing is essential for advancing understanding in many fields. Indeed, the ability of scientists to have full and open access to data from multiple sources has led to many of the important scientific discoveries of our time. For example, many of the important advances in the field of weather and climate prediction, and biotechnology were only the result of careful analysis and study of global databases available to researchers in a full and open manner.

The continued full and open availability of scientific data on an international basis is therefore critical to continued scientific, economic and social progress by all nations. This is particularly true in the developing countries where the international diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge through the use of digital networks such as the Internet, and other new information management technologies, has great potential to improve the prospects for rapid economic development.

Recently, however, these benefits of scientific progress have been put at risk by increasing commercialisation of data, and facts of nature, that traditionally have been considered to be in the public domain (i.e., not subject to protection under traditional intellectual property regimes). This commercialisation has been supported and encouraged by the disturbing trend to provide much greater proprietary rights in databases, and the facts they contain, through various legislative initiatives and private contract law.

Legislation has been enacted in some nations, and is under consideration in others, that creates unprecedented, new and unique property rights in non-copyrightable factual databases. In addition, proposals have been made for a new international treaty to protect such databases. These initiatives create a strong form of intellectual property protection for non-copyrightable compilations of data – much stronger than is provided under existing laws. In addition, these initiatives generally provide for very weak exemptions for public-interest users such as researchers and educators. These new rights, coupled with the unlimited contractual rights to licence digital information, and with technical protection devices such as encryption, permit data providers to impose whatever conditions of access and use they wish. The increasing commercialisation of factual databases by both private and public sector institutions, supported and encouraged by the introduction of highly protectionist legal regimes and unfettered licensing rights, is antithetical to the tradition of full and open exchange of data. This is a threat to fundamental scientific research and education.