I stumbled into a law professor’s blog the other day and have been stopping by every now and then to see what she’s up to. She discussed a neat case on December 1st:
It appears that a database designer had municipalities plug in information about real estate properties into the designer's database. The compilation of data is likely copyrightable (because of the categories chosen by the designer), but the designer is trying to use that compilation copyright (and the contracts it has signed with the municipalities) to block anyone from gaining access to the admittedly public domain data contained in the database -- data that wasn't even collected by the database designer. [Italics original]. There's no other way to get this data.
Before I continue, let me clarify that my knowledge of copyright law is limited to the basics I learned in a Business Law class; I’m going on gut instinct here.I can see how the database designer would be incorrect in assuming the gathered data were copyrightable. The source data were not originally private and could not thus become private just because they were plugged in to the database. I can also see that the database design could be copyrightable, given it is a unique work (much like software). However, I did not see any clarification as to whether or not the designer manipulated the data, for manipulated data would appear copyrightable. If a copyrightable database design used a copyrightable manipulation technique/algorithm, couldn’t the resulting data be copyrightable?
Anyway, interesting stuff. I’d like to learn more about it.
