[OSM-legal-talk] Legal status of certain mapping activities

[Tom Lee]

Frederik's perspective on question 4 seems correct to me. Speaking
imprecisely (by necessity, given national differences on these questions),
IP rights attach to the creative form that expressions of fact take; and,
in the EU, the collective form of those facts when arranged into a
database. The facts themselves are not protected from reuse.

I'll also add: it's important to consider the intention of the institution
publishing the dataset. Is your library publishing its location to make
money, or to help people find the library? Clearly the latter. What about
when Google does it? Their interest is obviously more commercial.

This may sound a bit ruthlessly realpolitik, but it's not: assessing risk
is a necessary part of making judgments about legal exposure. And when a
violation does occur, the commercial impact of the violation on the IP
owner is generally part of how the law assesses damages. Your library
system will probably have a harder time demonstrating damage to their data
licensing business than Google would.

Tom
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