Re: maps

The copyright in maps really just means you must make your own from sources other than the copyrighted map. This is a thin copyright which truly protects only the sweat of the brow that goes into making maps - Feist notwithstanding. The non-sweat of the brow justification is that a map involves many choices - what to include, what to leave out, coloring, shading for terrain, scale, and so on.

The facts embodied in the map are not protected - e.g., the location of Rome, the names of cities, the boundaries and contours, etc. But, if you purely copy these sorts of things without refering to other sources, e.g., non-copyrighted original state survey maps, for instance, then you could well violate the copyright.

Some maps intentionally omit details which would be important for other purposes. If your map competes directly with that map, then too much similarity in choices would be cause for suspicion. For example, there are maps of the BWCA for canoeists. These have many minor inaccuracies and "fudges" in them - but they are very, very good for their purpose. If I were to create a competing set of maps, I would almost certainly, using today's technology, make topo maps and be more accurate and up-to-date. To the extent I was not, the inference of copying gets stronger and stronger. Also, the likelihood of me choosing the same exact scale and the same amount of overlap and the same breakup of the BWCA into map-sized zones is pretty slim, unless I were trying to duplicate the other maps.

All this said, copyrights in maps is a bit anomolous because of the factual nature of them.

Cheers,
Steve Jamar

ps there were other reasons no one may have answered - the assumption that someone else would, or that there are no map copyright specialists on this list - I certainly am not one and I even suspect that some of what I have written above is, while not wildly inaccurate, somewhat incomplete or not dead-on the mark. But it is not too far off either.

Prof. Steven D. Jamar
Dir. LRW Program
Howard University School of Law
2900 Van Ness Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20008
sjamar[_at_]law.howard.edu vox: 202-806-8017 fax 202-806-8428

The more you know, the more you know you don't know. Received on Sat May 10 1997 - 17:27:29 GMT