HR 3261 and collection copyrights [LWN.net]

HR 3261 and collection copyrights

Posted Jan 29, 2004 21:34 UTC (Thu) by zorgan (guest, #4016)
Parent article: HR 3261 and the ownership of facts

Can someone explain how this is the different to the existing notion of
copyrights? As an example, a single chess game that was played in a public
place is not copyrightable (I am simplifying a little here -- the moves
themselves are not copyrightable, but the record of them is). But if you make a
collection of 10000 chess games, than that is copyrightable. This has always
made sense to me, as making such a collection contains many decisions, and
is work that seems worth to be protected.

Why isn't the content of databases by default subject to collection copyright?

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HR 3261 and collection copyrights

Posted Jan 30, 2004 17:40 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Under US copyright law, you cannot have copyright in a collection of facts unless you compile them in some creative order. The standard example case is a phone book. Case law holds that alphabetical order is not creative enough, so you cannot have copyright in a phone book.

I'm not familiar with the chess game case, but if you're right, I guess it must pass the order test.

The "order" rule gets hard to interpret when computers come into the picture, but the point is that this law would give you something similar to copyright in a phone book database, even though you couldn't have copyright in it.