Fact Sheet

Version May 2010

What Rules Apply to PSI Re-use?

What is this fact sheet about? In the process of creating PSI-based services, re-users will have to traverse the legal labyrinth surrounding PSI re-use. The main difficulty is that PSI re-use rules connect, blend and blur four fundamentally different areas of law. However, when walked through in the right sequence, they are less complex than they appear. PSI re-use rules: north, south, east and west Grasping the picture of legal regimes applicable to PSI re-use requires a very broad view, as the rules come from four fundamentally different areas of law: freedom of information law, ICT law, intellectual property law and competition law. To make it even more complex, these areas of law are governed by a combination of European, national, and sometimes even sectoral rules, which are occasionally challenged by ICT developments. Untangling the legal spaghetti So where should a re-user start to better understand its rights and the (im)possibilities as to its ambitions to create PSI-based services? In essence, it boils down to four sequential and inter-related steps: 1. can I get to the PSI is there access? and, if so, 2. can I find the PSI is there accessibility? and, if so, 3. can I re-use the PSI do I have to get authorization? and, if so, 4. are the conditions for PSI re-use fair is there a level playing field? 1. Access The legal right to get to PSI is dependent on the access regimes laid down in national, and occasionally European (environmental information), freedom of information regimes (FOIAs), and sector specific regimes. Access regimes need to strike a balance between the public and democratic interests of knowing what the government is doing versus the interests of the government (security) and other stakeholders (like companies (trade secrets) or individuals (privacy protection)) not to disclose information. 2. Accessibility However, access alone does not do the trick: in this digital information age accessibility is a prerequisite for effective access. Therefore, increasingly, it is no longer regarded as only a technical issue (standards, metadata and, in a broader context, data management policies), but also as a legal issue, and it raises the question of whether there is a legal obligation to make PSI accessible (like the INSPIRE Directive does). 3. Re-use limitations Even if access and accessibility are guaranteed, re-use still requires that the PSB concerned has not limited the (re-)use potential by disallowing re-use altogether or, when allowing re-use, limits the re-usability of PSI by exercising copyrights and, in particular, database rights. Rules hereon are laid down mainly in the Copyright and Database Directives and in national rules. 4. Fair re-use conditions Even if the above three conditions are favourable, the re-use conditions such as pricing, format, and speed of delivery need to be fair and, in a broader sense, those conditions need to be transparent. Without such fair and transparent conditions, the re-user may not be able to compete on the market or to create an economically sustainable product. At the end of the day, it may even disappear from the market. Rules on these issues are laid down in the PSI Directive, as well as in competition rules (European and national). Advice to re-users: tick the four boxes Re-users should carefully monitor and regularly check their radar as to changes in the legal landscape. The dynamism in the fields concerned is, relatively speaking to the standards of lawyers at least high!

ePSI Platform Fact Sheets provide short introductions to key concepts and developments, allowing new comers to the PSI re-use arena to get up to speed swiftly. Find ePSI Platform Fact Sheets at epsiplatform.eu.