Open Database License

Open Database License
Name	Open Database License
Author	Open Data Commons / Open Knowledge Foundation / Open Data Institute
Date	2009
License	copyleft database license

Open Database License

The Open Database License is a legal framework created to govern the sharing, use, and redistribution of structured datasets and databases. It establishes obligations and permissions intended to protect database creators while promoting reuse by communities, institutions, companies, and projects. The license has been used by mapping initiatives, research repositories, cultural institutions, and technology platforms.

Overview

The Open Database License was drafted by advocates affiliated with the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Data Institute, and the Open Data Commons project, and it interacts with international intellectual property instruments such as the Berne Convention, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, and national statutes like the United Kingdom's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act and United States Copyright Act. It addresses sui generis database rights as recognized in the European Union Database Directive and engages with case law from courts including the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, and national courts in countries such as France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Prominent adopters include projects and institutions such as Wikimedia Foundation, OpenStreetMap Foundation, European Commission initiatives, United Nations agencies, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Library of Congress, British Library, and national mapping agencies like Ordnance Survey and National Geographic Society.

Terms and Conditions

Key clauses require users to attribute database providers and contributors, to apply the same license to derivative or newly produced databases, and to provide mechanisms for preserving provenance and contributor credit. These conditions echo principles found in licenses created by the Free Software Foundation, Foundation for Open Source, Creative Commons, and the Apache Software Foundation, and they bear comparison to terms in the GNU General Public License, MIT License, and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. The license defines "database" and "extraction" and distinguishes "substantial" from "insubstantial" use, referencing legal tests applied in landmark cases such as British Horseracing Board v William Hill and The Football Dataco litigation. The terms interact with contractual doctrines found in civil law jurisdictions like France and Germany and common law jurisdictions like England and Wales, New York, California, and Delaware.

Versions and Compatibility

The original 2009 text has sparked subsequent updates, interpretations, and compatibility debates involving licenses and standards from organizations such as OpenStreetMap Foundation, Creative Commons, Free Software Foundation Europe, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Data Institute, and the Linux Foundation. Compatibility discussions reference projects such as Wikipedia, Wikidata, OpenCorporates, Data.gov, European Data Portal, GitHub, GitLab, Amazon Web Services Data Exchange, Google Cloud Public Datasets, Microsoft Research Open Data, and initiatives by institutions like Stanford University, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, and the Wellcome Trust. Interoperability questions also arise with terms in international agreements and regional frameworks endorsed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Council of Europe.

Adoption and Use Cases

The license has been applied in mapping projects, scholarly data repositories, cultural heritage digitization programs, biodiversity databases, transportation and urban planning datasets, and civic technology platforms. Notable implementations include OpenStreetMap data contributors coordinated by the OpenStreetMap Foundation, geospatial datasets used by National Aeronautics and Space Administration and European Space Agency programmes, datasets hosted by European Bioinformatics Institute and National Institutes of Health, collections at the British Museum and Smithsonian Institution, and municipal open data portals in cities such as London, New York City, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona. Technology companies and non-profits like Mapbox, Carto, Esri, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have navigated licensing choices involving this license when integrating third-party datasets.

Legal Challenges and Interpretation

Courts, arbitration panels, and administrative bodies have examined the license’s scope in disputes involving data scraping, database extraction, and derivative database creation. Litigation and arbitration have engaged firms and institutions including Oracle, Google, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, RELX Group, Elsevier, Springer Nature, LexisNexis, and data aggregators, while academic litigants and non-profits such as the Wikimedia Foundation, OpenStreetMap Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Transparency International have tested enforcement and compliance strategies. Legal scholars and organizations—Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, European Court of Human Rights commentators, and constitutional law reviews—have analyzed enforceability across jurisdictions including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and India.

Criticism and Reception

Supporters including the Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Data Institute, and numerous academic researchers praise the license for clarifying rights, fostering reuse, and protecting community contributions, while critics from legal firms, proprietary data vendors, and some corporate counsel raise concerns about viral share-alike provisions, attribution complexity, indemnity gaps, and conflicts with database rights regimes in the European Union and elsewhere. Commentators from institutions such as the Royal Society, British Academy, American Philosophical Society, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, and Berkman Klein Center have debated practical adoption, with policy bodies like the European Commission, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, OECD, and national legislatures weighing guidance on open data licensing.

Category:Open data