In its much criticised judgment no 14106/1995 the First Instance Court of Athens rejected an application for interlocutory measures filed by a company for the protection of a data base it had developed in 1992 for the calculation of the objective value of real property situated in Greece, in accordance with the criteria set by the Ministry of Finance.

The application was rejected on the ground that, even though a team of experts had worked for two years elaborating 350 maps and 8 volumes of lists of prices referring to 10,000 blocks of buildings and had made autopsies in certain areas, the data base thus created was not original according to the theory of "statistical uniqueness". According to this theory, whatever according to the law of probability could not have been created by someone else , had he pursued the same objective under the same circumstances, is deemed original.

The court ruled that the law of intellectual property protects the original final work and not the sweat of the brow or investments made. The data base in question did not present any form of intellectual inspiration and any one could have gathered the same elements and could have been driven to the same result. Furthermore the court found that the more detailed a certain data base is, the less space there is for the development of any divergence and thus any originality.

The application was solely based on the protection of databases as works of intellectual property and not on the protection of the underlying software or on provisions of unfair competition. It must be noted that the judgment was the first one referring to the protection of databases and issued after the enactment of law 2121/1993 which implemented the European Computer Directive. It further remains to be seen how the Greek legislation will be amended to incorporate the provisions of the recently enacted Database Directive.

Note: This article is not intended to be exhaustive and specific legal advice should be sought in relation to any specific circumstances.