Last week's Washington Post ran the following:
"NSI argues that it has an exclusive right to the database because the
>> company's original agreement with the National Science Foundation specified
>> that it would own any "intellectual property" created by the
>> address-registration business. "It's very clear that we have the rights to
>> this data," said NSI spokesman Christopher Clough."
While NSI may have a plausible argument, it is certainly not "very clear."
In fact the statement seems wrong on its face, because while the structure,
sequence and organization of database may be copyrightable, raw data, under
most circumstances, is not protectable under copyright law, nor would raw
whois data (the type a competitor might need) appear to be protected under
trade secret law (as the whois data is not maintained as confidential
information).
I wrote to Don Telage and Chris Clough last week asking them to clarify the
statement. I am not aware of a response to date. I respectfully request
that NSI explain its statement regarding intellectual property claims in
"this data" (which data precisely?), especially in view of the Feist case.
