Open Geodata in Europe - Inspire directive

[John Halleck]

On Mon, 15 May 2006, Andy Waddington wrote:

> David Gibson wrote:
 
> 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 ?

Let's not talk hypothetical...  there is real case law on the topic.
(At least in the US.)

Two surveyors produced a map of the same county.  The maps were
essentially the same.  One sued the other for copyright infringment.
The courts ruling was that the maps were essentially identical, but
had separate copyrights, and therefore one could not infringe the other.


This and other interesting cases are in the "United States Code Service's
annotated "Title 17 Copyrights"
They show (in my opinion) that the meaning assigned by the courts to some
phrases is very different from any normal dictionary meaning...  Which
makes arguments based solely on the dictionary meanings (as I've seen
here) rather moot.