[OSM-legal-talk] ECJ confirmed 96/9/EG for printed maps

[Christoph Hormann]

On Sunday 13 March 2016, Tobias Wendorff wrote:
>
> I don't know, if this thematic has already been discussed on this
> list, but  European Court of Justice (ECJ) has confirmed the
> classification as a database for (printed) topographic maps (see EuZW
> 2015, 955). Yet the commentaries can't foresee the consequences, but
> publishers are happy to see a stronger proction of their maps and
> data.

I don't think there has ever been any serious doubt that printed maps 
can be databases.  I also don't see any immediate consequences of this 
for the ODbL and OSM coming from that.

It has long been a widely accepted notion that if you use an ODbL 
produced work as a database, i.e. you extract semantic information from 
it and use it in a database-like way, you are subject to the 
derivative/collective database regulations of the ODbL, meaning you 
cannot whitewash ODbL data from share-alike by generating a produced 
work and reverse engineering data from it again.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/