David Brooks, a Van Gogh expert from Toronto with a web site
containing digital reproductions of the artist’s works is suing a
Dutch web site owner under European database rights, saying he has
no rights to reproduce material from his site, according to a
report by the International Herald Tribune.
Mr Brooks has run his site, VanGoghGallery.com, for five years
and has received praise for his work from the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam. He had permission to post the materials on his site, but
the Museum recently alerted Mr Brooks to the activities of a rival
web site, about-van-gogh-art.com, which is alleged to have
reproduced the reproductions and texts from Mr. Brooks’ site
without permission.
Mr Brooks is relying on European laws against database
infringement to make his rival remove the images from his site. He
also hopes to use these laws to protect his income from a planned
CD-ROM of the paintings, sketches, watercolors and drawings.
Last year, the on-line recruitment company StepStone obtained a
court order under the same EU copyright and database regulations to
prevent a rival from providing hypertext links to StepStone's
on-line job advertisements.
