[Taxacom] ZooBank reality check: scanning and copyright

[Barry Roth]

Donat Agosti <agosti at amnh.org> wrote:    >3. Descriptions are factual knowledge. They therefore can not be
  >copyrighted, 
  I would be interested in a reference to a legal opinion backing up this statement.  My understanding is that even though a fact exists and is discoverable by any observer (the shell of snail species X consists of 6.5 whorls), a published description containing that fact is an individual cretive work and thus covered by copyright.  The example is sometimes given that the fact of someone's phone number being ###-###-#### is not copyrightable, but the telephone directory is.
   
  Barry Roth

 			
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