AG Szpunar: Legal protection of databases under EU law applies when database producer is not adversely affected

Undertaking an examination of when sui generis legal protection that is granted for databases applies under Directive 96/9, in particular for content that can be accessed online, Advocate General Szpunar issued his Opinion in SIA ‘CV-Online Latvia’ v SIA ‘Melons’ (C‑762/19) last week on Thursday, finding that the contents of a database can be extracted and reused (such as by an internet content aggregator) if that does not ‘adversely affect’ the database producer.

Database producer opposing use of its database contents by internet content aggregator

The Advocate General first reformulated the questions posed by the referring court in the dispute between

(a) a specialised search engine’s (CV-Online, ‘the producer of the