Legal protection of geographical information
The European Umbrella Organization for Geographical Information (EUROGI), an organization established under the Community's programme for the establishment of an internal information services market (IMPACT II), is to conduct a study on the legal protection of geographical information. The study which will be conducted through RAVI, the Netherlands Council for Geographical Information, a member of EUROGI, will identify bottlenecks in the area of legal protection of geographical information and propose possible solutions. The project will follow up a previous EUROGI study "Legal protection of geographical information: copyright inventory", which describes the type and scope of existing legal protection in the Member States. The new study will be the next step towards the development of an efficient and effective legal framework. Issues such as the disparities in protection between Member States, and the position of users under the new Directive on legal protection of databases, will be addressed in the study.