In an attempt to throw the authorities off his trail, "Alfred M. Szmidt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> transmitted: > > 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. > > The amount of work isn't important, it's about the creativity. > > I was responding to this part, where you imply that the amount of work > is what matters: > > | Making a list of words with definitions is a lot of work. So a > | dictionary is certain protected by copyright. > > Writing all those definitions in the dictionary requires > creativity, so you get copyright on the dictionary. > > It is about as creative as listing phone numbers and names, or > producing a list of genomes. We disagree that a dictionary can be > copyrighted, I don't consider it a very creative processes at all. I > don't have any references, but I seem to recall that only the > "presentation" of a dictionary can be copyrighted, which is just about > the only creative work involved in producing a dictionary. Same deal > with a phone book, really.
I'd agree that listing genomes and phone listings isn't terribly creative. <aside> The notion of patenting the genomes themselves seems preposterous to me. On the other hand, a patent on a particular therapy that uses genomic information seems like something that fits with what is appropriate to patents. </aside> Dictionaries, though, require a fair bit of creative thought to generate descriptive definitions. -- let name="cbbrowne" and tld="gmail.com" in String.concat "@" [name;tld];; http://linuxfinances.info/info/lsf.html Rules of the Evil Overlord #196. "I will hire an expert marksman to stand by the entrance to my fortress. His job will be to shoot anyone who rides up to challenge me." <http://www.eviloverlord.com/> _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
