I keep sticking out my head over and over again [e.g. 1, recently on R list] asking the same questions trying to clear up my understanding of data-copyrightability and licensing issues.
yesterday I have found a nice summary [2] which I think might clarify situation here as well a bit. From what I see Database itself can easily be protected by a copyright as a "compilation" even if specific data pieces in the database are not copyrightable and plain facts; so you would need to obey the license terms if you are just going to ship the database as a whole or a major part of it. Data itself, if taken sparingly (;-)) might not be protected by a copyright (thus reused freely), BUT if it all comes from EU -- situation might be different: "... a sui generis right that prohibits the extraction or reutilization of any database in which there has been a substantial investment in either obtaining, verification, or presentation of the data contents. Under this second right, there is no requirement for creativity or originality." [2] So there I guess you would need to obtain such facts from other means/sources. [1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2012-April/063762.html [2] http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html On Mon, 02 Apr 2012, Kurt Roeckx wrote: > On Mon, Apr 02, 2012 at 11:00:11PM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: > > Nevertheless, facts such as protein sequences are not copyrightable. This > > is > > somewhat confirmed by the UniProt consortium itself on their website > > (http://www.uniprot.org/help/license), and my conclusion is that, in > > isolation > > from the rest of the UniProt database, the records in the test suites of > > BioPerl and EMBOSS are not copyrightable. > Some countries have something like database rights, and it's my > understanding that it can cover things that aren't otherwise > copyrightable. > Kurt -- =------------------------------------------------------------------= Keep in touch www.onerussian.com Yaroslav Halchenko www.ohloh.net/accounts/yarikoptic -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120404141303.gx22...@onerussian.com
