Re: Genealogy and copyrights

Jim Murphy wrote:
>
> jett;
>
> I've spend the past week trying to get John Rigdon, Malcolm Bascom,
> and Brian Leverich to understand that you "cannot copyright facts".
> We aren't talking about "fair use" as they have been saying.
....
> Since you are a lawyer I'm sure the attached Supreme Court Decision
> will be interesting to you. Also, you might check out this New Paper.
> "U.S. Legal Protection for Databases" is obtainable from the Fenwick
> New Media Publication server at

As indicated in my previous message, I've copied a few pages from a couple books. I'm not relying on Feist as I'm giving the authors/editors the benefit of the doubt. They didn't merely publish a compilation of facts a-la the phone book. They collected and published biographical information about people, including, in some cases, photographs. I'm not sure if the original poster had this in mind, but I assume it is the case in many instances.

Bruce Bertram
<bmb[_at_]bmb.com> Received on Tue Oct 29 1996 - 02:11:44 GMT