Jankowska Marlena, Geodata - A New Object of Intellectual Property?

It should be pointed out that there has recently been a constantly high level of interest in technical sciences, partly driven by the daily public need for geo-information (GI) and by the mere availability of so many geographically relevant applications. It should be emphasised that, though the extensive geoinformation literature in the area of technical sciences takes many positions and though their references to IPR are ever-increasing, the IPR issues related to GI are expressed in clumsy and very general terms, accepting entirely as dogma and as shibboleth beyond any doubt that digital maps (along with digital geodata ) fall under copyright protection. This appears to be only a manifestation of a much greater problem, that of copyright protection for data as such, which is just now becoming an issue of common interest to both academics and European lawmakers.