washington

Critics of proposed legislation that would assign sweeping copyright protection to commercial online databases scored a victory last week when the US Congress passed a bill with the controversial measure stripped out.

Organizations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers had been lobbying for months against the legislation, which was sponsored by Representative Howard Coble (Republican, North Carolina) and Senator Rod Grams (Republican, Minnesota).

The proposed change in copyright law, its opponents say, would stifle the flow of scientific information by granting broad and vaguely defined proprietary rights to data that are now exchanged freely (see Nature 394, 410; 1998).

When the measure moved easily through the House of Representatives in May and was then folded into a larger copyright bill on a fast track for passage, “the visibility of the issue was heightened”, according to Prudence Adler of the ARL. An intensive letter-writing and lobbying campaign led to House and Senate negotiators dropping the database provision from the larger copyright bill earlier this month.

Around 50 companies and associations, representing a range of political views and interests, weighed in against the database clause. Several federal agencies also pointed out potential constitutional problems.

By the time of the vote, 15 senators urged that the database clause be dropped because it had not been debated thoroughly and serious disagreements remained.

But Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch (Republican, Utah) and other Republican leaders promised the bill's sponsors that the database issue will get an early hearing when a new Congress returns to Washington in January.