Re: [ontolog-forum] Copyright in Taxonomies: Leading case in US law(ADA

[Ali Hashemi <ali@xxxxxxxxx>]

I thought I had a handle on this, but the more people respond, the hazier the picture becomes.

For clarity, would it be accurate to interpret the ruling as meaning:

If some legal agent uses vocabulary V to codify a taxonomy. Then that taxonomy, using vocabulary V is copyrightable.

Now, given that copyright law extends only to the _expression_ of an idea and not the idea itself, then one would not be in violation of the (c) on the taxonomy(+V) to codify the taxonomy using a novel vocabulary, V2 - where perhaps there is a trivial 1-1 mapping between each element in V and V2? And consequently, the onus on 'protecting' the underlying theory or system of relations of the taxonomy falls to patent law.

Or am I interpreting the Idea-_expression_ divide incorrectly and the new taxonomy(+V2) would in fact be considered a derivative of the former(+V)? If so, at what point (if at all) would a non-trivial mapping make the new work not a derivative?

Thanks,

Ali

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 2:16 PM, sean barker <sean.barker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 

To throw further darkness on this discussion, it is clear that individual words are not copyrightable, but a whole novel is. Similarly, I would assume that an individual classification statement such as "Socrates is a man" or "All men are mortal" would be uncopyrightable, however that a complex system would be. Further, there is a distinction between the publisher's copyright on the form of a text, but that is separate from the author's copyright of the text itself - for example, Shakespeare is out of copyright, but that does not give me the right to photocopy a recently published edition of a Shakespeare play.

 

The question therefore is, at what point does a classification system become copyrightable? (in the sense of an author's copyright, rather than a publisher's copyright) Or better, at what point does a collection of classification statements become a copyrightable system? And at what point does the overlap of one system with another become an infringement of copyright? This question may become more vexed by the way that at some level, the many individual statements of classification will be statements of the obvious.

 

A further complication is that in an ontology, one defines the set of differentia between classes (the properties of the class) on a class by class basis, and therefore one can infer the class

hierarchy without explicitly stating it. It would be an interesting discussion as to whether an inferred classification system which is identical to an explicit classification system are comparable in copyright terms.

 

Sean Barker
 Bristol, UK

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