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databases not copyrightable in the USA (was: CA certificates)



On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 01:23:40PM +0200, Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote:
> In some countries (USA and Germany?) lists/databases are copyrightable,
> even is single data is not! (phone book, games scores and statistics,...)

Not in the United States.

The controlling Supreme Court precedent is _Feist Publications, Inc. v.
Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)_.

There has been an effort in every session of Congress since then to
overturn that precedent legislatively, but so far all such efforts have
failed.  The current attempt is HR 3261, the "Database and Collections
of Information Misappropriation Act (DCIMA)".

See <http://writ.news.findlaw.com/student/20040211_karl.html> for a
little more on this subject.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |    You should try building some of the
Debian GNU/Linux                   |    stuff in main that is
branden@debian.org                 |    modern...turning on -Wall is like
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |    turning on the pain. -- James Troup

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