Re: copyright in the digitized object?

On Mon, 28 Feb 2000, Julia Crawford <juliac[_at_]okstate.edu> wrote:
>
> Recently, our university library made available a public domain item
> (government document published in 1904) on the web in digital format.
> Specifically, we OCR'd an historical text, which is not rare, but it
> is a primary source document valuable to researchers in particular
> fields.
>
> A publisher contacted us and asked permission to capture the text from
> our web site and reprint in book format which they in turn plan to
> sell. Since the book is not rare, the publisher could certainly make
> photocopies of the original document to reprint, but prefers our text,
> for whatever reason.
>
> Of course many commercial publishers take public domain government
> documents and charge high prices for value-added services such as
> additional indexing, etc. We have put value in the document, by
> digitizing it. But other than that, the value lies in the ability
> to keyword search it, and follow the links we've provided, which
> doesn't help the publisher who will just print it. Is the value to
> the publisher that the text is digitized and can be presented in
> any manner (font, appearance, etc.), and they're not tied to a
> photocopy of the original document?
>
> Did the publisher have to ask permission or were they just being
> courteous?

Perhaps the reason that the publisher asked permission to "capture" text from another's web site was to avoid the possibility of liability under legal theories other than copyright. More specifically, there have been several significant law suits brought in recent months, including one brought by our firm, that broadly address the extent of one party's "right," if any, to commercially use information taken without consent from another party's web site. Copyright issues can certainly arise in these disputes. But depending on the facts at issue, other legal theories such as trespass to chattels, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, violation of state law computer trespass statutes, unfair competition, breach of contract (for violating the web site terms or service agreement) and in some cases misappropriation have been asserted against third parties accessing and extracting information from another's web site without authority.

Mike Tobin
Kennedy, Covington, Lobdell & Hickman, L.L.C. Bank of America Corporate Center
100 North Tryon Street
Suite 4200
Charlotte, North Carolina 28202
mtobin[_at_]kclh.com Received on Thu Mar 02 2000 - 15:49:41 GMT