> Don't you think that we need a special license for databases? > > You cannot copyright databases in the US AFAIK. There was a case > about a phone dictionary or so if I recall...
A list of names and phone numbers is not the result of creative activity (decided in the Feist case). But a dictionary is much more than that. Making a list of words with definitions is a lot of work. So a dictionary is certain protected by copyright. A *wordlist* is not. A dictionary requires as much work as a phone book and isn't a very creative process, now, an encyclopedia, that would be another subject. But I wouldn't call an encyclopedia a database either, I was using the word in the sense of a list of data that someone has gathered (not created, compare with an encylopedia), such a list cannot be copyrighted as far as I know. For example, a list (database) of genomes for a bunch of species isn't copyrightable either, but it is a lot of work to gather the data. Europe has a separate right for the protection of databases, which is independent of copyright. So a wordlist could be a protected database (ie no copying) even though there's no copyright protection for wordlists. But this right is only avaiable for European producers. http://www.iusmentis.com/databases/ I'll have to read that, thanks. _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
