Department of Law Spring Term 2020 Master Programme in Intellectual Property Law Master’s Thesis 30 ECTS Text and Data Mining in EU Copyright Law Author: Gabriella Svensson Supervisor: Kacper Szkalej 1 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................ 3 Subject and Purpose ........................................................................................................................................ 3 Material and Method ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Delimitations .................................................................................................................................................. 5 Outline ............................................................................................................................................................ 5 1. A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO TEXT AND DATA MINING ................................................................... 7 2. FUNDAMENTAL EU COPYRIGHT LAW .............................................................................................. 11 2.1 Protectable Subject Matter and Exclusive Rights .......................................................................... 11 2.2 The DSM Directive and TDM ....................................................................................................... 14 3. WHY AND HOW MIGHT COPYRIGHT BE AN OBSTACLE FOR TDM ............................................... 21 3.1 Beneficiaries ................................................................................................................................... 22 3.2 Lawful Access ................................................................................................................................ 26 3.3 Retrieval and Analysis ................................................................................................................... 37 3.4 Sharing Results and Spreading Knowledge ................................................................................... 38 3.5 Storage and Verification ................................................................................................................. 40 4. CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................................... 42 Bibliography ...................................................................................................................................................... 46 Legislation .................................................................................................................................................... 46 Case Law ...................................................................................................................................................... 46 EU Publications ............................................................................................................................................ 46 Reports .......................................................................................................................................................... 47 Books ............................................................................................................................................................ 47 Articles .......................................................................................................................................................... 48 Other publications ......................................................................................................................................... 50 2 INTRODUCTION Text and data mining (TDM) can be a useful tool in such diverse fields as scientific research, journalism, culture and not least training of artificial intelligence (AI) and its importance is likely to only grow in the future. Despite its huge potential there are many indicators that copyright law restricts use of TDM – keeping users from optimal application. Copyright law should foster innovation and creativity and when it risks having the opposite effect it needs to be well motivated. In the summer of 2019 the Directive on Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Single Market (the DSM Directive)1 was adopted and provided the EU with two new copyright exceptions for TDM, which along with the rest of the directive are currently being implemented into national law. Given the recent changes in European copyright law concerning TDM and the technique’s promising usefulness it is now relevant to investigate how they interrelate. Subject and Purpose The purpose of this thesis is to describe whether and to what extent copyright can be an obstacle for TDM with focus on the recent changes in EU law, critically comment what has changed following the new directive and what is still missing for an efficient application of TDM. Efficient application is for the purpose of this thesis not to be understood as economic efficiency, but rather practical application within the boundaries of current framework with a satisfactory level of legal certainty. The thesis will answer the following research questions: • Who may benefit from the exceptions in the DSM Directive? • How may contractual provisions restrict the efficient application of TDM? • How may technological protection measures (TPM) restrict the efficient application of TDM? 1 Directive (EU) 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC (DSM Directive) [2019] OJ L 130, 17.5.2019, p. 92–125 3 • To what extent does the legal framework permit publication of the result including parts of the input material? • To what extent does the legal framework permit storage of the copies generated during the TDM process? • How well does the DSM Directive meet its objectives of increased legal certainty and harmonisation? The above questions will be discussed throughout the text and critically analysed in search of inconsistencies and practical problems that might arise when using TDM. Material and Method The main focus will lie on EU copyright law with examples from states in and outside of Europe where suitable. The main union law to be discussed is: • Dir. 2019/790 on Copyright and Related Rights in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) • Dir. 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (InfoSoc)2 • Dir. 96/9/EC on the Legal Protection of Databases (Database Directive)3 The thesis will be based on a qualitative method through analysis of relevant provisions in the above legal texts and study of scholarly articles and reports commenting the drafting of the DSM Directive or evaluating the final version as well as related legal questions. Stakeholder and interest organisation views will be part of the material to reflect practical issues that might arise but will only be given little space in order to avoid giving the lobbying activity that revolved the drafting process of the directive too much focus. Finally, it is not the author’s choice to exclude EU case law from the material, but relatively few questions regarding the admissibility of TDM under the abovementioned legislation have been referred to the CJEU4 – possibly as a result of an undeniable level of uncertainty surrounding the 2 Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society (InfoSoc) [2001] OJ L 167, 22.6.2001, p. 10–19 3 Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases (Database Directive) [1996] OJ L 77, 27.3.1996, p. 20–28 4 Court of Justice of the European Union 4 relationship between copyright and TDM reducing the motivation to test the law. As a result, there will be few references made to EU case law throughout the following text. Delimitations It should be noted that TDM involving a minimum of copying or use of techniques crawling though data and processing each work separately could be performed without infringing copyright or database law5, but the objective of this thesis is not to offer technical solutions to a legal problem. Rather, the choice of technique should be based on what is optimal to reach the desired result and not dictated by law. Similarly and for the same reason, the thesis will only describe the TDM process to the extent required to appreciate the legal discussion, limiting the technical detail to a minimum. The main focus point for the thesis is copyright exceptions6, hence the rightholder’s exclusive rights will only be described to provide the right context. Article 3 of the DSM Directive applies to cultural heritage institutions in addition to scientific research organisations, but the thesis is limited to discussing the latter as a beneficiary only. Finally, other legal areas such as data protection and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)7 can naturally hinder TDM too, but only copyright law will be touched upon. Outline The thesis is divided into four chapters beginning with a brief introduction to text and data mining presenting the most central steps in the process and when it can be applied. The second