Re: copyrighting of numbers

On 5/20/98, Terry Carroll <carroll[_at_]tjc.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 15 May 1998, Mark Lemley <mlemley[_at_]mail.law.utexas.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Terry, is your argument that databases are covered by the statute,
> > but *not* covered by the constitutional clause? If so, where is the
> > constitutional authority for the statute?
>
> What statute? We (or at least I) am talking about a hypothetical
> statute protecting databases without regard to their originality. The
> constitutional authority for such a statute would be the Commerce Clause
> and/or the treaties clause, if enacted pursuant to a treaty.
>

Sorry. "The statute" in the context of my post refers to the Copyright Act. The Copyright Act clearly protects some databases. So if the argument for the constitutionality of a database protection bill is that databases are outside the scope of the "copyright clause" and therefore can fall within the commerce clause, then it seems existing copyright protection for databases has some constitutional problems.

[Preemptive strike: I am *not* saying this is Terry's argument. I'm not even saying Terry is arguing anything at all. I'm just trying to respond to what I understand to be the general constitutional justification for database protection.]

Mark Lemley
<mlemley[_at_]mail.law.utexas.edu> Received on Thu May 21 1998 - 15:19:23 GMT