Intellectual property is not a monopoly on facts, information and data. Until recent years, this principle seemed to be safely entrenched in both national laws and jurisprudence across the world. Copyright laws instruct that authors have certain exclusive rights on their own original expressions, but cannot exclude others from accessing, using and benefiting from the information that such expressions convey. Similarly, patents give to inventors a temporary monopoly on certain uses of their own inventions, but on condition that the information on how to work the invention is fully disclosed and made accessible to anyone interested in the patent. Collections of data, or databases, made no exception. However many facts, information or data you collect, you do not acquire a right to exclude others from using the collection and pick up the information therein contained. As the US Supreme Court stated in the landmark Feist decision: “Common sense tells us that 100 uncopyrightable facts do not magically change their status when gathered together in one place”. With the Database Directive of 1996, the European legislator has challenged this commonsensical statement. A new, somehow “magical” right has been introduced, in the hope of creating an incentive to database makers. The latter now enjoy a right to exclude others from using facts, information and data, on the very ground that they have gathered them in one place—a database. Does the “database right” represent a departure from that revered principle of intellectual property recalled above? To what extent is this right a monopoly on facts, information and data? And what is its practical effect and significance?