(lost track of who said this, but...) >> Very unlikely, derived individual coordinates are facts. I've asked >> multiple lawyers about this personally. >> > Are you saying that facts that are derived from a Produced Work are > not covered by the reverse engineering clause? >> >> If I derive the location of all the street corners of a city from a >> rendered map then that is just a collection of facts and not a >> reverse engineered recreation of the original database? If so, it >> doesn't seem like the reverse engineering clause is worth the paper >> its written on.
Ordnance Survey seems to take a different view, which is precisely the reason OSM exists. In a way it doesn't matter whether you, I, or even a bunch of lawyers think the opposite if OS can sink OSM just by sucking OSM into a massively expensive legal action. But "all the street corners" may individually be facts, but the collection of them is a database which you've recreated. The whole point about database IP protection is that there is value in the collection when any individual piece of content is either not protectable or not worth protecting. It would be really nice if a court would actually decide (in a case involving someone who can afford to defend themselves) whether someone geolocating their photo from an OS base and publishing it (or even quoting a grid reference in a book) infringes OS IP, and especially where derivation starts. I did actually try asking OS this once - I put a set of scenarios to them ranging from quoting a grid reference to tracing lines, and all I got back was "it's too complicated to answer, we'd be delighted to offer you a license for your circumstances". David _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
