Discounting the sweat of the brow: Converging international standards for electronic database protection

In many jurisdictions, the required level of originality for the protection of databases has been in a state of flux in recent years, and the recent trend in to back away from an originality standard based purely on sweat of the brow principles has resulted in rising thresholds of originality. Regardless of potential differences in practical effect, these standards represent a drastic shift from the long-held industrious collection ideals that have permeated copyright jurisprudence in the common law world for well over a hundred years, and present a clear picture of standards on convergent paths. This paper examines the laws of the United States, Canada, the European Union, and Australia.