[OSM-newbies] Copyright for street names

[Denver Gingerich]

On Jan 6, 2008 12:26 PM, John McKerrell <john at mckerrell.net> wrote:
> Just thought I'd mention:
>
> >>> 3) You remember a business' name and look it up in the phone
> >>> book, there
> >>> you find the street name.
>
> Phone book could be considered a copyrighted database, as would the
> online equivalents...

In the US, the contents of the white pages in a phone book are not
copyrightable as determined in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone
Service [1].  Information such as that in phone books may be
copyrightable material in other countries; some countries have case
law on this issue [2], some don't.

Whether the contents of a phone book are copyrightable is not really
relevant to this discussion, though, because a street name alone is
not copyrightable (it is too short) even though a phone book (a large
collection of street names and numbers) might be in some countries.

Denver


1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service#Other_countries