Abstract

This work offers a comparative evaluation of the South African and European Union (EU) copyright protection of databases. The work also considers how the originality standard in the Copyright Amendment Bill is likely to affect the copyright protection of databases in South Africa. The work also considers the intersection between the protection of databases and competition and the interface between the protection of databases and the exercise of certain constitutional rights in both jurisdictions. The main conclusion of the work is that the South African copyright standard for protecting databases is too low and should be revised to accommodate certain competition law concerns and the exercise of certain constitutional rights.