Open Geodata in Europe - Inspire directive

[Andy Waddington]

David Gibson wrote:
 
> I think you might be misunderstanding the use of the term "literary
> work" in the (English) copyright act. If I collect some facts and write
> them down, that is a literary work within the meaning of the act and I
> have full copyright protection under English law. No conceivable
> argument about *that*.

But if I collect the same facts, and if both of our collections are
sufficiently accurate that they agree with each other totally, then
how is the copyright Act to distinguish between them ? You may be
able to claim copyright on your collection (although I think the
moral justification for doing so is dubious, whatever the legal
position), but you would be unable to prove that my collection was
copied from yours (especially if it wasn't :), whilst my independent
collection of identical information would similarly be protected by
copyright, which I would undoubtedly liberate by releasing my facts
under a Creative Commons license ....

It would appear that the law is an ass and that it has an unreasonable
definition of the term "literary work".

On Monday 2006-05-15 10:43, Eric Madelaine responds

> We currently have some arguments with the french ministry of ecology, 
> that wants the caving federation (FFS) to give them (for free) our lists 
> of cave entrances, and argue that there cannot be any intellectual 
> property on the list of coordinates, because they are just "facts"...

Whether you do in fact own the intellectual property or not is irrelevant
if you have not given the lists away - the Ministry of Ecology may or may
not be breaking the law by copying your data, but if it does not have
access to them, then it would need to buy the data from you on terms that
you would be relatively free to dictate. If it already had access to the
data, and did not believe they had any IP protection, it would not be
asking for them ...

Andy