Re: Bug#451799: new evince cannot display Japanese characters correctly
John Halton writes:
>> However I don't think there is anything copyrightable in these files;
>> they only contain series of numbers that describe the mappings.
>
> I don't see any reason in principle why "series of numbers that
> describe the mappings" couldn't be protected by copyright. Could you
> provide more details of why you think those numbers/mapping might
> *not* be copyright-protected?
Based on a quick look, these files establish a correspondence between
different character set encodings. Copyright protects creative
expression. What is the creative part of this mapping? I can see two
possible bases: character selection and ambiguity resolution.
Character selection would be the selection of which characters to list
(or not list) in each file. Ambiguity resolution would be the
handling of look-alike characters in distinct sets.
Neither of those seem like they are actually creative, given how
thoroughly standardized and documented the character set encodings
are.
That being said, I am not sure enough to risk it in court on my dime.
I would hope that Adobe would be willing to provide the data with a
DFSG-compatible license and/or a notice that makes it clear whether
they think the mappings are protected by copyright.
Michael Poole (IANAL, IANADD, TINLA)
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