CRIMINAL LAW PROTECTION OF DATABASE AT A GLANCE

Database protection is provided in Romania by the general law on copyright no. 8/1996. According to the law, it is considered to be a crime making available to the public, by any means, the special rights attributed to database owners or copies thereof. This paper will focus on, one hand, presenting the way database and database related products can be subject to a copyright general protection and, on the other, revealing the special sui generis right attributed to database owners. In such a context, criminal instruments for protecting such rights seem to be quite annoying for the perpetrator, but less effective when it comes to a proper enforcement by the criminal bodies. This paper will therefore try to compare the way guilty actions of the culprit are effectively sanctioned by the criminal instruments provided by the law.And because the Romanian law on copyright does follow at least the letter of the European Directives on copyright and the protection of database, this paper will also search the spirit of the relevant European case-law and its applicability by the Romanian authorities