I'm not a lawyer either--though I once played one on stage. 8-) Phraseology and legalese make this very difficult to discuss, much less understand. I believe the standards (as a concept and a means to package electronic data for exchange between partners) is not copyrighted per se. However the, as you called it "fixed in tangible media" materials are copyrighted be they paper or PDF or ASCII or SEF file on CD/Diskette/new fangled storage media.
Therefore, the "publicness" of ANSI ASC X12 standards is in the fact that anybody can exchange data in X12-defined standard format. In that respect, I think the rule is you can painstakingly/lovingly hand-key, screen-scrape, PDF-parse, etc. the standards for use in software (for the purpose of using it to create and exchange X12-defined transactions). However, if your hand-keying, screen-scraping, PDF-parsing or whatever is done simply to transform the data into some other format for purposes of reselling the specifications as specifications...that's verboten. It's similar to the rule for the average novel you buy at the book store. If you hand-copy, scan and process with OCR or whatever to produce a copy (in another format such as calligraphy on parchment or electronic format on CD-ROM) that you wish to distribute or re-sell (thereby denying the original author of rightful revenue), that's illegal. Only the copyright holder has those rights. At the risk of beating a dead horse, the funds that are generated by the sale of X12 standards books, CDs, table data, etc. are used to pay for the costs of production (including the materials, facilities and personnel who do the production and distribution, etc.). There's already been a lot of debate as to what constitutes fair and reasonable prices for the purchase of those standards specifications, so, please, there's no need to go there again. 8-) I hope my explanation is close to the mark and doesn't create even more confusion. Best regards, Bill Chessman Inovis(tm) -----Original Message----- From: Michael Mattias [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2005 1:28 PM To: EDI-L Mailing List Subject: Re: [EDI-L] EDI Standard Table Data > In other words, DISA (on behalf of X12) is (probably) the only "legal" > source for machine readable X12 standards to be used in a commercial > product. X12 has insisted on having the raw table data copyrighted - > and charging an arm and a leg for it. (I am not a lawyer). (And my late sainted mother was still quite proud of me.) AFAIK, the data format 'of itself' is public domain; meaning all DISA may copyright is that data "as fixed in tangible media." (fixing in tangible media is a requirement for copyright, anyway). I do not know where a copyright lawyer would come down on this, but it seems to me that if somehow manage to fix that data in tangible media in some format different than that offered by DISA, I'd be perfectly legit to resell that form of the data. (Copyrighting that new format myself, thank you). The one real "kicker" here though would be a license violation: without ever having seen it, I'd bet dollars to donuts the license provided by DISA for the use of *any* of their copyright materials prohibits the use of the material for the production of anything for resale... meaning of course, you'd have to be able to prove that you did not use any DISA-copyright materials when you painstakingly hand-edited or or screen-scraped or PDF-parsed the information in the first place. All in all, an interesting question: How can a data format be a public standard, but not be available except from a single supplier, who licenses it only for 'no-resale' use, resulting in the same net effect as though that 'public' data were in fact owned intellectual property? Then again, I may just totally misunderstand the 'publicness' of the ANSI ASC X12 standards. Michael Mattias Tal Systems, Inc. Racine WI [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L Yahoo! Groups Links . Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Access the list online at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
