Text and Data Mining in the Proposed Copyright Reform: Making the EU Ready for an Age of Big Data?

This opinion aims at examining the Text and Data Mining (TDM) process and its legal aspects in the context of the Commission’s proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which introduces in its Art. 3 a mandatory exception to copyright allowing for the carrying out of text and data mining of protected works. The discussion starts with the examination of several critical questions. At which stage of the TDM process are intellectual property rights affected? Do already existing exceptions and limitations apply to some TDM activities and techniques? What are the problems faced by researchers in applying them? This paper then considers the potential of a new mandatory TDM exception to drive innovation in the EU. The advantages of introducing an “open clause” on top of an enumerated list of exceptions to address some of the related problems are also reviewed. The study provides an in-depth analysis of the Commission’s Proposal, assesses its positive and negative impacts, and provides some suggestions for possible improvements. It concludes by recommending a more ambitious reform with regard to TDM in order to get the EU into shape for the age of Big Data. © 2018, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich.