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That doesn't justify others stealing from him though.

no, but it means he cant bring any action against the guy if he owns no IP on the content either.

EDIT: except perhaps the database schema

And without those IP permissions in place, in the form of written approval by the bus company to use their data, he risks opening one almighty can of worms…

IANAL, but it is my understanding that you own the copyright on the modifications you make when creating a derivative work, regardless of whether or not the derivative work is itself a copyright violation.

But if the original work was a collection of facts that is not protected by copyright, then your derivative work might not be protected by copyright either. Lists of facts are not protected by copyright in the US.

This is true but mostly an abuse of copyright protections in my opinion.

Look at how Westlaw gained private control over the dissemination of public legal decisions through standardizing and copyrighting their presentation of those decisions.

I happy see people lose at putting up copyright gates of this sort, whatever legal right they might have.

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