Database Protection under Copyright Law: Perspective Intellectual Property Landscape of Bangladesh

Abstract

There is a growing significance of protecting database legally across the globe as a consequence of everchanging science, technology and innovation world which gains urgency in intellectual property landscape. Although Bangladesh has tried to cover the legal protection of database through the Copyright Act 2000, yet some overarching issues like e-commerce, big data databases, Internet of Things (IoT), etc., has not been addressed in this Act. In this context, this paper seeks to determine the necessity of protecting database in Bangladesh. Moreover, the paper examines how different countries protect their databases under various intellectual property (IP) laws with a view to learning lessons from their own experiences. It also tries to examine the pros and cons of the sui generis system and copyright system and focus on the historical debate between them, purposely exploring the best-suited legal protection for database in Bangladesh.