[OSM-legal-talk] Would The ODbL and BY-SA Clash In A Database Extracted From a BY-SA Produced Work?

Francis Davey fjmd1a at gmail.com
Tue Sep 7 17:14:07 BST 2010


On 7 September 2010 16:51, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> Ah, I see there is a provision for this in the EU database right: "In
> respect of a database created by a group of natural persons jointly,
> the exclusive rights shall be owned jointly."

Yes, that's what I was alluding to. If there were no OSMF and the
project was being carried out by a group of interested individuals -
as quite a few crowd-gathering of data projects are - then that might
apply.

>
> Of course, if a joint database right works like joint copyright, it's
> fairly useless.  Any joint owner of the database right would have full
> sub-licensable rights to the database, so long as they account for and
> share all their profits in using that right.  All it takes is one
> joint owner to grant a free worldwide license to do anything, and the
> database right is effectively gone.

Hmmmm, that sounds wrong to me. Joint ownership of copyright does not
work in that way at all. Either owner may prevent the other from (for
example) copying their joint work. If one joint owner licences their
work, it might well estop them from making any claim against
licensees, but the other joint owners would not be bound by it.

That's why joint copyright ownership is a ghastly thing and I try to
dissuade clients from entering into joint ownership agreements unless
there's a really good reason to do so.

Regulation 16(1) of the Copyright and Rights in Databases Regulations
1997 works in a similar way. It states:

"16. — (1)  Subject to the provisions of this Part, a person infringes
database right in a database if, without the consent of the owner of
the right, he extracts or re-utilises all or a substantial part of the
contents of the database."

Where "consent of the owner" means the joint consent of all owners.

-- 
Francis Davey



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