Copyright (was PDFs and tapeworm descriptions)

[Julian Humphries]

At 06:42 PM 5/14/2002, Richard Pyle wrote:

>and re-distribute it without Smith's permission.  But what if Rich Pyle
>independently combed through the original liteurature, and built his own
>database of the same information from scratch.  Is Rich Pyle then free to
>publish the contents of *his* version of essentially the same database
>online, and further declare it to be in the public domain?

Probably not if it represents a substantial portion of the original database.
That compilation, if complete, would now represent the only source for a
complete or nearly complete listing of these taxa.  Now of course, the only
incentive for someone to invest the effort to create such a database and
to copyright it would be if you could make money licensing the data, but
who knows...

I only saw the original WIPO iteration, but in that version if your compilation
caused financial harm to the original database creator, you were in
violation.  I *believe* that provision is still true, so, yes another version
of those words and concepts, at least as a complete account of the taxa,
types, etc would be forbidden (at least if you published or distributed it
and reduced the marketplace for the original).  If you are interested see:

http://cryptome.org/eu-copyright.htm

I would note that I and several other published warnings about this to
Taxacom back in 1997/98.

http://usobi.org/archives/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9810&L=TAXACOM&P=R2927

See also:  http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/records/0309056357.html