Hi, I came across the following while looking for something else. It regards the interpretation of database rights in a case between William Hill and Fixtures Marketing. Article here:
http://www.out-law.com/page-5698 My impression is that it might have implications for whether database rights apply to OSM data and who owns that protection since it suggests: 1) Investment in actually creating data which forms part of a database will not automatically result in a database right. Organisations creating data must make separate investment in the organisation and arrangement of the database itself in order to gain protection. Are individuals compiling data or creating it? Traces / drawing roads are probably creating data. Collecting road names might be compiling data, but I'm far from certain. 2) Database rights only arise where the maker of the database has invested substantially in obtaining or verifying data from independent sources. Has OSM Foundation (the other alternative for the database rights owner?) invested enough effort in obtaining and verifying the data from database rights to apply? Contributors are unpaid volunteers, independent from OSMF so maybe their time doesn't count in which case the only applicable effort is the server hosting. Is that enough? There is very little (if any) verification going on from OSMF itself. I'm sure this has been investigated and considered by the relevant lawyers but it seemed worth mentioning. The final suggestion in the article that: 'Remember that a database can attract copyright as well as database rights. The reduction in the scope of protection under database rights may mean that the makers of databases seek to rely more on copyright in order to protect their investment.' Has a certain comedy element to it given the current license change! Cheers, -- Brian _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
