Comments on: Distributed, Linked Data has significant implications for Intellectual Property Rights in Data.

By: Charles Cox

Charles Cox — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:56:42 +0000

there are so many intellectual property and copyright violations these days’~,

By: Eric Hellman

Eric Hellman — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:39:46 +0000

I've written a follow-up to this post focusing on the comparison between US and UK postcode data availability.

By: hochstenbach

hochstenbach — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:55:25 +0000

Linked Data and IR http://bit.ly/78JqEV by @mmmmmrob: provide a schema for a IR-protected dataset, the crowd+aggregators will set it free

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By: rdmpage

rdmpage — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:01:57 +0000

RT @mmmmmrob Distributed, Linked Data has significant implications for Intellectual Property Rights in Data. http://bit.ly/5zu0om/

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By: gluejar

gluejar — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:37:25 +0000

Post by @mmmmmrob http://bit.ly/5zu0om/ has me working on a new post about effect of database copyrights.

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By: Rob Styles

Rob Styles — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:10:49 +0000

Which would leave only Database Right within Europe, but some doubt over the applicability of that due to the date the PAF was first created. And, is not reciprocated overseas, leaving the possibility of a full copy of PAF being hosted by someone in the US perhaps.

Interesting, but not the focus of what I was trying to convey – that the Linked Data web has the potential to be a distributed database; in which case an entire database may be published and queryable without any infringement taking place.

By: Eric Hellman

Eric Hellman — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:37:36 +0000

Thanks to Robert Richards for the references. To summarize, the first precendent establishes the applicability of copyright to taxonomies, based on the creative effort their authorship requires. But PAF is not a taxonomy.

The second precedent establishes that it is possible for a table of numbers to be a protectable expression, if they represent the result of creative effort. But PAF isn’t that either.

The commentary clearly indicates that a numbering system cannot be protected by copyright, even if it is original and non-obvious- that would be the province of patent law.

By: Rob Styles

Rob Styles — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:13:42 +0000

@Robert Richards, thanks for the pointers, I’m not familiar with those cases so will have a read – Could you say what you thought the implications were for what we’re talking about?

@Jonathan you’re right, there is a degree of speculation in my post about what would or would not be considered infringing. Without precedent it’s difficult to say, but I think it’s worth exploring the notion that Linked Data changes our perception of what ‘publishing’ data means – as a result of being able to rejoin all the parts to form a whole.

By: Jonathan Rochkind

Jonathan Rochkind — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:39:49 +0000

“PAF is more than just a database, however, it’s an invented numbering scheme rather than factual data. That means it qualifies for Copyright protection I suspect (just as Dewey does) so would still be subject to Copyright in the US.”

Depends on exactly how “creative” or “original” the numbering scheme is.

For instance, in the famous case that firmly expanded that “facts” (and thus databases) are not copyrightable in the US, Lexis’s page numbers were considered not copyrightable, as they were just, well, page numbers. Incremental integers assigned one after another to pages. No creativity or originality whatsoever.

Now, if a system has _some_ creativity or originality, does it have enough to be copyrightable? A judge would decide. And then it would be appealed and another judge would decide, who knows.

[But, incidentally, while I'm not a lawyer, I find OCLC numbers, incremental integers assigned in order of receipt of a record by OCLC, to be _quite_ analagous to page numbers, with the obvious implications. ]

By: richards1000

richards1000 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:31:00 +0000

Fine post by @mmmmmrob about distributed retrieval using #linkeddata , with implications for legal information retrieval http://j.mp/82p6e7

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