[Taxacom] ZooBank reality check: scanning and copyright

[Brian O'Meara]

 From the US copyright site [ http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html ]:

"Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal 
copyright protection. These include among others:

Works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression...

Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; 
mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; 
mere listings of ingredients or contents

Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, 
discoveries, or devices, *as distinguished from a description,* 
explanation, or illustration" [emphasis mine]

So, based on this, if a taxonomic description is a description in the 
sense above, it seems to be subject to US copyright (though I agree with 
Frank Krell's sentiment that this may be unfortunate for science). Of 
course, this is just an excerpt from a government website, not from the 
law itself.

Brian O'Meara

Frank Krell wrote:
> I am quite sure that most taxonomic description contain more creativity than a telephone directory.
> My comments might be somewhat counterproductive since I am interested myself in getting descriptions out of the copyright (for ZooBank - the real registry, not the present pre-version). However, there is no doubt that taxonomy is more than data (although the data aspect gets increasingly stressed all the time). Us taxonomists do science, and every description is full of hypotheses of homology and other theory, the combination of which is a creative and intellectually demanding process. It is not just a compilation of facts. "The upper thing on the front of the beetle is green" might be factual knowledge. "The clypeus [or labroclypeus? - or is it the frons and the clypeus is reduced?] of the beetle is green" is certainly more than factual knowledge. What a pity, but I can't be political here.
>
> Frank
>
> Dr Frank-T. Krell
> Head, Coleoptera Division
> Editor, Systematic Entomology
> Commissioner, International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature
> Department of Entomology
> The Natural History Museum
> Cromwell Road
> London SW7 5BD, U.K.
> Tel. +44 (0) 20 7942 5886
> Fax +44 (0) 20 7942 5229
> f.krell at nhm.ac.uk
> http://www.nhm.ac.uk//research-curation/staff-directory/entomology/cv-3566.html
> http://myprofile.cos.com/ftkrell
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Stephen C. Carlson
> Sent:	Thu 07/09/2006 23:32
> To:	Barry Roth; 'TAXACOM'
> Cc:	
> Subject:	Re: [Taxacom] ZooBank reality check: scanning and copyright
>
> At 03:15 PM 9/7/2006 -0700, Barry Roth wrote:
>   
>> The example is sometimes given that the fact of someone's phone number being 
>> ###-###-#### is not copyrightable, but the telephone directory is.
>>     
>
> This example had been valid in some jurisdictions before 1991, but
> the Supreme Court eventually ruled that a telephone directory lacked
> a sufficient amount of creativity to be copyrightable in Feist
> Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).
>
> Stephen Carlson, J.D. 
>