Re: Non-copyrightable work with non-free license.
I keep sticking out my head over and over again [e.g. 1, recently on R
list] asking the same questions trying to clear up my understanding of
data-copyrightability and licensing issues.
yesterday I have found a nice summary [2] which I think might clarify
situation here as well a bit. From what I see
Database itself can easily be protected by a copyright as a "compilation"
even if specific data pieces in the database are not copyrightable and plain
facts; so you would need to obey the license terms if you are just going to
ship the database as a whole or a major part of it. Data itself, if taken
sparingly (;-)) might not be protected by a copyright (thus reused freely), BUT
if it all comes from EU -- situation might be different: "... a sui generis
right that prohibits the extraction or reutilization of any database in which
there has been a substantial investment in either obtaining, verification, or
presentation of the data contents. Under this second right, there is no
requirement for creativity or originality." [2] So there I guess you would
need to obtain such facts from other means/sources.
[1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2012-April/063762.html
[2] http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html
On Mon, 02 Apr 2012, Kurt Roeckx wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 02, 2012 at 11:00:11PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> > Nevertheless, facts such as protein sequences are not copyrightable. This is
> > somewhat confirmed by the UniProt consortium itself on their website
> > (http://www.uniprot.org/help/license), and my conclusion is that, in isolation
> > from the rest of the UniProt database, the records in the test suites of
> > BioPerl and EMBOSS are not copyrightable.
> Some countries have something like database rights, and it's my
> understanding that it can cover things that aren't otherwise
> copyrightable.
> Kurt
--
=------------------------------------------------------------------=
Keep in touch www.onerussian.com
Yaroslav Halchenko www.ohloh.net/accounts/yarikoptic
Reply to: