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Comment by dotdi | Hacker News Reader

Can somebody translate?

This case was dismissed on procedural grounds. The opinion's analysis applying Dostar is just the Judge saying how they would have applied the standard to this set of facts but it doesn't actually set any precedent.

Plaintiff had bad copyright notice. If the copyright notice is changed to be specific about the data and not 'everything under the under sun' on this website. This would be like someone trying to copyright the word 'crayon' on his website. Crayon in most countries counties means 'writing device'. Since So you can copyright the word 'crayon' your website. But you could copyright 'Crayola Crayons' since that is specific.
In this case the copyright was 'This is our website. We don't have anything specific about our data.' So no specified claims to sales or specific claims to sales data puts everything in the public domain as long as the scraper uses the data for 'informational purposes' and does not make a copyright claim to the data itself.

FYI: a more specific definition for crayon is 'a writing device where the writing material wears off to leave a meaningful mark.' Examples are: crayons (duh), pencils, charcoal sticks, etc. Since pens and markers have ink or pigment reserves and do not wear down they are not considered crayons.

Though you can't copyright "Crayola Crayon", you could trademark the name.

However, you could copyright a article describing the merits of a specific type of writing instrument, regardless of who owns the trademark.

This is not at all what the case says. You're either not an attorney or didn't read the opinion. I suspect both.

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