Why the proposed Text and Data Mining exception is not what EU copyright law needs

« Introduction

The Proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (the Proposal) contains a number of provisions intended to modernise EU copyright law and to make it “fit for the digital age”.[1] Some of these provisions have been object of a lively scholarly debate in the light of their controversial nature (the proposed adjustment of intermediary liability for copyright purposes contained in Art. 13, see here at p. 7) or because they propose to introduce a new right within the already variegate EU neighbouring right landscape (i.e. the protection for press publishers contained in Art. 11).

Far less attention has attracted the provision contained in Art. 3 of the Proposal dedicated to “Text and data mining” (however, see here and here). The goal of Art. 3 is to introduce a mandatory exception in EU copyright law which will exempt acts of reproduction made by research organisations in order to carry out text and data mining for the purposes of scientific research. In this blog, Thomas Margoni and Martin Kretschmer discuss Art. 3 and explain why its formulation – although underpinned by the right innovation policy goal – is wrong.

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