VENEZUELA Law and Practice Contributed by: Dana Bentata, Anette Beyer and Biddy Fraga Bentata, Bentata Abogados
6.4 Protection Through Contract and Confidentiality There is no applicable information in this jurisdiction. 6.5 Licensing and Assignment There is no applicable information in this jurisdiction. 6.6 Reverse Engineering There is no applicable information in this jurisdiction. 7. Data, AI and Emerging IP Issues 7.1 Data Rights and Database Protection Venezuelan law does not recognise an EU-style sui generis database right or any equivalent standalone protection for databases based solely on the invest- ment made in obtaining, verifying or presenting data. As a result, protection for datasets must be assessed through other legal frameworks, principally copyright and, to a lesser extent, trade secret. • Copyright protection – The LDA protects original databases and compilations only where, by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents, they qualify as a personal creation. The same statute also protects computer programs, which may help protect certain software-related elements surrounding a database, although not the raw data itself. • Trade secret protection – Trade secret protection may apply under Article 39 (2) of the TRIPS Agree- ment, provided the information is secret, has com- mercial value by virtue of its secrecy and is subject to reasonable measures to preserve confidentiality. See 5.1 Legal Framework and Protectable Infor- mation and 5.2 Reasonable Measures and Confi - dentiality . The current legal framework contains no specific anti- scraping rule or text-and-data-mining regime. The permissibility of scraping or data extraction therefore must be assessed under the general principles appli- cable to whichever legal basis is implicated: • copyright, where the extraction reproduces pro- tected expressive selection or arrangement;
closure, acquisition or use of undisclosed information without the right-holder’s consent in a manner contrary to honest commercial practices. The provision makes it clear that this includes, at a minimum, conduct such as breach of contract, breach of confidence, induce- ment to breach, and acquisition by third parties who knew, or were grossly negligent in failing to know, that such practices were involved. In practice, this would extend to situations such as: • an employee taking confidential files to a competi- tor; • a joint-venture partner using shared know-how out- side the agreed purpose; or • a competitor exploiting information obtained through a confidentiality breach. 5.4 Duration and Loss of Protection There is no fixed statutory term for trade secret pro- tection; the protection lasts as long as the informa- tion remains secret and continues to meet the three requirements of Article 39 (2) of the TRIPS Agreement. While authorised disclosure that is made on a confi- dential basis and subject to appropriate restrictions does not end protection, accidental or unrestricted disclosure may destroy protection if the information becomes generally known or readily accessible to persons in the relevant trade. 5.5 Enforcement and Remedies Without a dedicated legislative framework governing trade secret enforcement, relief for misappropriation is typically sought under general civil, contractual and unfair competition principles, and may include injunc- tive relief and damages. 6. Know-How 6.1 Definition and Legal Basis of Know-How There is no applicable information in this jurisdiction. 6.2 Protectability Requirements and Scope There is no applicable information in this jurisdiction. 6.3 Ownership, Creation and Employee Know-How There is no applicable information in this jurisdiction.
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