"No Intellectual Rights for Market Data," Says Citi Lawyer

ATHENS - Data is not covered by intellectual property rights, but vendors are increasingly claiming rights and adding usage rights in contracts with clients, according to a panel at the FISD World Financial Information Conference in Athens.

"There are no intellectual property rights in market data," said Meredith Gibson, senior vice-president and counsel, IP and O&T Law Group, Citi, explaining that "strings of numbers have no copyright in them." "The last time judges looked at (this topic in the UK), they found there to be no copyright in a string of numbers," she said.

Yet, data vendors and exchanges are typically claiming intellectual property rights for data offerings. This has been an ongoing discussion, particularly in terms of vendors maintaining identification codes and enforcing intellectual property rights for the codes.

"Everybody likes to think there are some rights attached to data," she said, explaining that vendors may have database rights in the EU but not the US, but copyright is a different story. Companies cannot necessarily claim copyright just because it is something they have worked hard at. "The only way you can protect your data is by a contract," said Gibson.

Meanwhile, the vendor on the panel, Scott Preiss, vice-president, securities classification at Standard & Poor's (S&P), said S&P protects its content, and the process begins with a user service statement. The use of a service statement, a two-page document, allows the vendor to partner with the customer and understand with precision where and how the data is to be consumed, and for what purpose it will be used. "Understanding this relationship allows us to provide precisely what's required," he said.

"We believe this approach strikes an important balance between our investment in collecting, standardizing, maintaining and delivering data in a convenient and rapidly delivered format and the actual benefits that are derived by the user," said Preiss.