A ruling by the High Court has resulted in new case law governing sales agencies with regard to database rights. Where a sales agency has built up a database of customer details, they will now own a database right in that database in the event that there is not an agreement with another party as to the ownership of that database.

What this means in practice is that it is now important to ensure that agency or distribution agreements include an express assignment of any database rights to the supplier of the information (or principal), rather than relying on a general IP assignment clause. She says:

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