[OSM-legal-talk] New license status

[James Livingston]

On 30/09/2009, at 1:00 AM, Matt Amos wrote:
> yes. but since there hasn't been any case law on what substantial
> means (at least in europe, yet)

The reason I asked was because we had decision (Nine Network vs IceTV)  
from our High Court a few months ago, regarding the meaning of  
"substantial" when applied to database copyright. Not that it means  
anything in the rest of the world, especially since you have sui  
generis database rights instead in Europe, but it is interesting to  
see how things differ across the globe.

In this case a network produce a TV guide and someone reproduced the  
show name and time data from it. From my understanding, it was found  
that it wasn't substantial because the facts aren't copyrightable by  
themselves, and they hadn't reproduced a substantial part of the  
database schema or other things that are a copyrightable part of the  
database.


> we were advised to create
> "guidelines" on what we, as a community, consider substantial.
> apparently this would likely be taken into account, in the absence of
> case law, if anything goes in front of a judge.

Sounds pretty sensible, especially since "substantial" varies  
depending on whether it's in reference to copyright on the contents of  
the database, copyright on the database, sui generis database rights,  
as well as depending on jurisdiction. If you're somewhere that only  
the contract part is effective, then I assume it and case law would be  
all that there is to go on.