That article on West Publishing is a really interesting read, thanks Dave.
andy -----Original Message----- From: Dave Watts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 11:36 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: Intellectual property (was: RE: My sincerest apologies ...) > ... it is total nonsense to think that a) you did it out of spite for > your own financial gain as we all know you "virtually" > and otherwise and that b) any of those question which have BOOLEAN > answers could ever be considered unique or copyrightable. > Any one of us could have built a page with the very same questions and > their finite answers to a list/webpage. I would doubt that any court > (certainly outside of the US) would uphold a query about you posting > the questions unless, as noted you were doing it in direct competition > to CF Exam Buster based off its questions. I don't want to drag this out, but I think it's important for programmers, who spend their time creating intellectual property, to have a better understanding of intellectual property than this. First, motives don't matter. It doesn't matter why you copy intellectual property, just that you do. Second, most courts, in the US and the West in general, recognize the arrangement and formatting of data to be intellectual property. So, while the use of a single question may be coincidental or may be fair use, the use of a series of more-or-less identical questions would most likely be recognized as infringing on intellectual property. There's an abundance of case law on this topic, actually. Google 'copyright "arrangement of data"' for all sorts of fun reading. One very interesting case (interesting to me, anyway) hinged on pagination being added to public domain data! http://lawlibrary.ucdavis.edu/Lawlib/Nov98/0309.html http://www.federal-litigation.com/press.html Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software http://www.figleaf.com/ Fig Leaf Software provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized instruction at our training centers in Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Northern Virginia, or on-site at your location. Visit http://training.figleaf.com/ for more information! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Upgrade to Adobe ColdFusion MX7 Experience Flex 2 & MX7 integration & create powerful cross-platform RIAs http:http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;56760587;14748456;a?http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=LVNU Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/message.cfm/messageid:266772 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
