ABSTRACT

The meteorological and oceanographic communities have made good progress with intellectual property rights (IPR) to encourage data sharing. In the case of meteorology, the World Meteorological Congress, at its meeting in June 1995, adopted WMO Resolution 40, which provides for free and unrestricted access to near real time meteorological data (Harris 2002). The core policy of Resolution 40 notes:

The resolution then expands on the policy by giving guidelines to WMO Member States on the practice of the resolution, including:

A similar situation exists for oceanographic data with the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), at least for data relating to the open ocean (IOC 2001). There are, however, some obstacles to sharing of data in the coastal seas, for example the North Sea. Some biochemical data is sensitive and not shared, such as data on eutrophication associated with pollution discharges or the effects of accidental nuclear discharges into the sea. Data streamlining and open access is less mature for data of the shelf seas than for the open ocean, and this is particularly relevant to the major European seas – the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.