Posts Tagged: "MLS Database"

Toronto Real Estate Board Dispute Shows Awkwardness of Copyright Protection for Databases

Legal protection for databases in Canada is, perhaps surprisingly, a little convoluted. In some jurisdictions, unique database rights have been legislated (e.g. the EU). This is not yet the case in Canada where protection instead comes from a patchwork of rights provided by different regimes. Traditional intellectual property (“IP”) rights provide some protection, but with sufficient gaps to make exclusive reliance on IP inadvisable… In the decision, the Competition Tribunal found that the information in the MLS database does not attract copyright protection. The decision sets out the Tribunal’s attempt to apply the relevant copyright case law to determine whether copyright subsists in the overall arrangement of information in the MLS database.