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Copyright Issues in Databases

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Synonyms

Intellectual property; License

Definition

Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted by law to authors of original works of authorship. It applies automatically as soon as an original work is created and fixed in a tangible medium of expression, such as when it is stored on a hard disk. Originality requires independent creation by the author and a modicum of creativity. Copyright covers only an author’s original expression. Facts and ideas are not copyrightable. Copyright usually applies only partially to databases. Copyrightable expression usually is found in database structures, such as the selection and arrangement of field names, unless these do not reflect any creativity or are standard within an area of research. Copyright will also apply to creative data, such as photographs or expressive and sufficiently long text entries. By and large, the rule on facts and ideas means that most numerical data, scientific results, other factual data, and short text entries are not...

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Recommended Reading

  1. American Dental Association v. Delta Dental Plans Ass’n, 126 F.3d 977 (7th Cir.1997).

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  2. Assessment Technologies of WI, LLC v. WIRE data, Inc., 350 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2003).

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  3. Bellsouth Advertising & Publishing Corp. v. Donnelly Information Publishing, Inc., 999 F.2d 1436 (11th Cir. 1993) (en banc).

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  4. CCC Information Services, Inc. v. MacLean Hunter Market Reports, Inc., 44 F.3d 61 (2d Cir. 1994).

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  5. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).

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  6. Ginsburg JC. Copyright, common law, and sui generis protection of databases in the United States and abroad. Univ Cinci Law Rev. 1997;66:151–76.

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  7. Key Publications, Inc. v. Chinatown Today Publishing Enterprises, Inc., 945 F.2d 509 (2d Cir. 1991).

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  8. New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. v. Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., 497 F.3d 109, (2d Cir. 2007).

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  9. Southco, Inc. v. Kanebridge Corp., 390 F.3d 276 (3d Cir. 2004) (en banc).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Villanova University School of Law, Villanova, PA, USA

    Michael W. Carroll

Authors
  1. Michael W. Carroll
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael W. Carroll .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Dept. of Computer Science, UC Santa Barbara, 93106--5110, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Amr El Abbadi

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

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Carroll, M.W. (2016). Copyright Issues in Databases. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_875-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_875-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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