On 21/07/13 05:30, Mikael wrote:
> It has been proposed on Swedish Wiktionary to use a significant amount of
> material from a dictionary [1] which allegedly is out of copyright due to
> only having been protected under the law of "katalogskydd" ('catalogue
> protection') which is in effect for 15 years after publication. The last
> edition was published in 1989, the author died in 1986, and the last
> reprinting was done in 1999 -- though mere reprints are not supposed to
> grant extensions of the time of protection.
>
> Assuming that the assessment about the material falling under the
> "katalogskydd" is correct, is that sufficient for WMF to be comfortable
> hosting the material, or does US copyright law interfere in any way?
>
>
> \Mike
>
>
> (cc-ing to Wiktionary-l to see if anyone there has experience with this
> particular situation.)
>
>
> [1] http://runeberg.org/svaraord/

I am not a lawyer, and nothing I write here would be legal advice, but...

If I recall correctly, under US copyright case law a word's definition
cannot be copyrighted. There are only a limited set of ways to express
the definition of a term, and it is recognized this puts an undue burden
on new works.

However, a *collection* of terms may be copyrighted under the database
portion of the copyright rules.

But if such a collection makes up a very small portion of your own
collection (I believe there is a guideline of 10-15%) then its inclusion
in your database does not constitute an infringement.

What this means is: under US law (which is the standard applied to WMF
projects) sv.WT could likely include the contents.

What this *does not address* is: the person(s) adding the material to
the project, who may be subject to other legal jurisdictions.

Amgine

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