John Cowan wrote:
David Woolley scripsit:
Database copyrights are not like patents. As long as you obtain the
fact independently, you can publish them. Telephone directories and
maps have bogus entries to help detect whether a competing compilation
is truly independent.
Maps, I hasten to say, are copyrightable in the U.S., although facts in
the maps (like "London is in England") and about the maps ("Anytown USA"
is in grid square N1 on such-and-such a map") are not. The map itself,
however, requires the selection of which facts to present and the choice
of a manner of presentation, and as such is more than creative enough to
be an object of copyright.
Rather worrying and rather relevant to this, thread, an American company
is suing the (American) individual who maintains the timezone data used
in Linux and other open source and proprietary software, for alleged
infringement of their copyright on the historic timezone data, which
they allege that he has copied from their publication and has
attributed that publication as source.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/10/06/1743226/civil-suit-filed-involving-the-time-zone-database
--
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.
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