Re: Question concerning use of Online Information...

From: Bruce Hayden <bhayden[_at_]copatlaw.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 1994 09:11:57 -0600

>Hello,
>
> I was wondering about something, and figure those of you on this
>list might know the answer. Would it be legal for me to use stock
>quotes, etc. (taken, for example, from an online service such as AOL)
>in a newsletter which I publish? If not, where may I obtain similar
>information in chich I can legally use? Thank you.

I would say it depends on how long the quotes were, and how stock they were. Working backwards, one can say that most such things are protectable (and protected since we joined Berne) by copyright law unless somehow filtered (aka the Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison analysis of Computer Associates v. Altai and progeny). In your situation, very short phrases, or sometimes even sentences are usually not C/R protected as being too short to contain sufficient expression to qualify for C/R protection. Additionally, stock phrases and scenes can often be filtered as scenes a' faire.


Bruce E. Hayden                               29330 Lower Moss Rock Road 
bhayden[_at_]copatlaw.com                              Golden, Colorado 80401 
(303) 526-2399                                        FAX (303) 526-2008
Received on Thu Oct 13 1994 - 15:20:10 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Mar 26 2007 - 00:35:13 GMT