copyright and check lists

[Paul Kirk]

This is much too vague a response. There must be some quantitative value for it to be possible to implement. For example, if one record out of 1 million is annotated is the whole compilation then copyrightable? Or is it 1%, 5%, 10%? What is an annotation? Does 'I think this is correct' added to all records count as an annotation because this could be added in about 2 seconds and hey presto all the records are annotated.

Paul

Dr Paul M. Kirk
Biosystematist
CABI Bioscience
Bakeham Lane
Egham
Surrey TW20 9TY
UK

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom Discussion List [mailto:TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU]On
Behalf Of Anita F Cholewa
Sent: 11 May 2005 13:43
To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] copyright and check lists


I once contacted the US Copyright Office and was told if the checklist (or
database) is nothing more than a compilation then it was not copywritable.
If, however, annotations and comments were added then that changed the
nature of the beast and it was copywritable.

Anita

Curator of Temperate Plants
Bell Museum of Natural History
Univ. of Minnesota
1445 Gortner Ave
St Paul MN 55108