In the area of copyright law, EU and national policy makers presently discuss the need to adopt a new copyright limitation for the purpose of text and data mining. This new provision would make text and data mining activities ‘immune’ against copyright claims. Text and data mining could be carried out without an obligation to ask permission from copyright owners and clear rights. This copyright immunity would thus facilitate the mining of copyrighted material, such as literary, scientific and journalistic texts, blogs and tweets.

Against this background, the project aims to provide a detailed description of the functioning of text and data mining, and the different players and acts of use involved. It also provides a legal analysis of the different acts of use in the light of present copyright legislation to clarify in how far text and data mining may amount to copyright infringement.