On 7/20/05, Katheryn (Fitzwater) Devine <bankdevine[_at_]mchsi.com> wrote:
>
No, I am not. I am a generic person at the lowest stratum of our society. My occupation is computer programmer, if you really want to know it.
There are many attorneys that do not know much about copyright law and give wrong information. But then, there are many attorneys that know a lot about copyright law and give right information. Just because a person is an attorney does not necessarily mean that he is right at all the times. Also, just because a person is not an attorney does not necessarily mean that he is wrong at all the times.
> YOU SEEM TO HAVE "MISSED THE MESSAGE"
> IT IS NOT (NOT, NOT, NOT) ILLEGAL TO COPY NAMES.
> IT IS (IS, IS, IS) ILLEGAL TO COPY AN ORIGINAL WORK WHICH COMPILES NAMES
> IN AN "ORIGINAL FORM"
Then, your copyright is limited to the compilation. That is all you
can claim copyright. Anyone else is free to copy the names that
appear in your compilation as long as he does not copy your
compilation and as long as he does not copy any of the creative
parts in your compilation.
> SIR, MY "EXPLANATION" CAME DIRECTLY FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ATTORNEY
> SO TAKE UP YOUR "OPINION" WITH THEM.
Then, what did he or she exactly say?
> YES I CAN, AND IT HAS BEEN VERIFIED BY EXPERTS.
> YOU CAN TAKE ANY LINE ITEM FROM MY PUBLICATION AND PUBLISH THAT, BUT YOU
> CANNOT (CANNOT, CANNOT) TAKE ANY COMPILATION OF THAT DATA.
This is another area that you are not familiar with. You
should know that not every compilation is copyrightable.
It all depends on what kind of compilation that you use.
If it is just a plain collection of the names that you find from the public records, the compilation that you have is not copyrightable. If you have your own creative criteria that you use to decide whether to include names in your compilation, it is very likely that your compilation is copyrightable. You seem to assume that just because you have compilation, you automatically have copyright in it.
Just because you received the notice of copyright registration from the Copyright Office does not automatically mean that you have copyright in your compilation. It only means that the burden of proving that your compilation is not copyrightable is shifted to defendants if you decide to sue them.
Without knowing what is your criteria for collecting names from the public records and what is your criteria for compiling them, I could not say whether your compilation is copyrightable.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
<josephpietrojeungriolo[_at_]gmail.com>
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>
Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 4,911
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Fri Jul 22 2005 - 01:45:30 GMT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Mar 26 2007 - 00:35:55 GMT