No L 77/20 Official Journal of the European Communities 27. 3. 96 DIRECTIVE 96/9/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular Article 57 (2), 66 and 100a thereof, Having regard to the proposal from the Commission (), Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee (3), Acting in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 189b of the Treaty (%), (1) ~ Whereas databases are at present not sufficiently protected in all Member States by existing legisla- tion; whereas such protection, where it exists, has different attributes; ()  Whereas such differences in the legal protection of databases offered by the legislation of the Member States have direct negative effects on the func- tioning of the internal market as regards databases and in particular on the freedom of natural and legal persons to provide on-line database goods and services on the basis of harmonized legal arrange- ments throughout the Community; whereas such differences could well become more pronounced as Member States introduce new legislation in this field, which is now taking on an increasingly inter- national dimension; (3  Whereas existing differences distorting the func- tioning of the internal market need to be removed and new ones prevented from arising, while diffe- rences not adversely affecting the functioning of the internal market or the development of an infor- mation market within the Community need not be removed or prevented from arising; (4  Whereas copyright protection for databases exists in varying forms in the Member States according to (") OJ No C 156, 23. 6. 1992, p. 4 and OJ No C 308, 15. 11. 1993, p. 1. () OJ No C 19, 25. 1. 1993, p. 3. () Opinion of the European Parliament of 23 June 1993 (O] No C 194, 19. 7. 1993, p. 144), Common Position of the Council of 10 July 1995 (O] No C 288, 30. 10. 1995, p. 14), Decision of the European Parliament of 14 December 1995 (OJ No C 17,22 1. 1996) and Council Decision of 26 February 1996. ©) ™ (10) (1) (12) legislation or case-law, and whereas, if differences in legislation in the scope and conditions of protection remain between the Member States, such unharmonized intellectual property rights can have the effect of preventing the free movement of goods or services within the Community; Whereas copyright remains an appropriate form of exclusive right for authors who have created data- bases; Whereas, nevertheless, in the absence of a harmo- nized system of unfair-competition legislation or of case-law, other measures are required in addition to prevent the unauthorized extraction and/or re-utilization of the contents of a database; Whereas the making of databases requires the investment of considerable human, technical and financial resources while such databases can be copied or accessed at a fraction of the cost needed to design them independently; Whereas the unauthorized extraction and/or re-utilization of the contents of a database consti- tute acts which can have serious economic and technical consequences; Whereas databases are a vital tool in the develop- ment of an information market within the Community; whereas this tool will also be of use in many other fields; Whereas the exponential growth, in the Commu- nity and worldwide, in the amount of information generated and processed annually in all sectors of commerce and industry calls for investment in all the Member States in advanced information proces- sing systems; Whereas there is at present a very great imbalance in the level of investment in the database sector both as between the Member States and between the Community and the world’s largest database- producing third countries; Whereas such an investment in modern informa- tion storage and processing systems will not take place within the Community unless a stable and uniform legal protection regime is introduced for the protection of the rights of makers of databases; -