[fauigerzigerk]

I think what hiQ does is to predict whether a particular employee is about to quit.

So the interesting question to me is whether you can lawfully make predictions based on published information if that information is under copyright.

In Europe the answer is probably no, because the assumption is that in order to analyse data you have to copy it first.

To me, this interpretation of the term "copying" makes very little sense. So I wonder what US law makes of it.

[anticensor]

Europe has database rights, which has a fair dealing exemption for data analysis.

[fauigerzigerk]

I'm not sure what "database rights" refers to specifically, but the whole matter is actually rather complicated, because the EU copyright directive has a lot of optional exceptions that member states may or may not adopt.

Most of these exceptions only apply to non-commercial use though. So they wouldn't apply in a case like hiQ.

UK specific exceptions are explained here:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright

Unfortunately, both Labour and the Tories have taken a relatively hard line in the EU copyright negotiations, so it seems unlikely that things will be relaxed very much after Brexit.

[anticensor]

Database rights are a copyright-like intellectual property regime for databases.