Hacker News Reader

Comment by verve_rat | Hacker News Reader

You can't copyright a list of facts. I'm confused about what they have run in to? Maybe they should take some of the money they have raised and talk to a lawyer.

View on HN

The cease & desist mentions Asda [1] and [2] says "Asda chose NielsenIQ Brandbank, their existing digital content provider for 13 years"

So I'd wager the C&D came from Brandbank - who presumably supply product photos and product data (barcode, pack size, and all the other data like nutritional information you'd find on the packet if you were browsing in store)

[1] https://www.trolley.co.uk/imgs/cease-and-desist-letter.png [2] https://www.brandbank.com/asda-accelerates-their-rich-conten...

Nobody said it was copyright specifically. However:

"A database right is a sui generis property right, comparable to but distinct from copyright, that exists to recognise the investment that is made in compiling a database, even when this does not involve the "creative" aspect that is reflected by copyright.[1] Such rights are often referred to in the plural: database rights."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right

Yes but it doesn't prevent you to build your the exact same copy as long as you don't use the other DB as a source. Scraping the info yourself is perfectly fine. That's also the reason why people add "mistakes" to their DB as a kind of watermark.

But they are (unwittingly) using the other DB as a source. The data they're scraping turns out not to have been created by the supermarkets in question but sourced from a third party database and published under license on the supermarket websites.

Which raises a very interesting legal question: If the data is recompiled, despite having come from another source via an intermediary (who are using that data to describe the products they are selling), is it still subject to the database rights?

How about we try out a reductio ad absurdam: I'm going to start a startup. Our business model is to license the information on customers' websites, and then license it back to them in turn. This then means that anyone who uses our services in the UK can sue for copyright on lists of facts obtained by screen scrapers, as they've been through our database copyright washer. Think flight prices, hotels, cars, anything.

Is that a viable business model? If not, why not?

> is it still subject to the database rights

Someone is creating a phone book as a service to companies.

Elsewhere, these companies are publishing their phone numbers to get more customers.

Then the phone book creators demand license fees anywhere these phone numbers appear in lists.

It's very dubious "database rights" come into play at all.

That's a better demonstration of the principle than I managed, actually. It does seem faintly absurd, unless there's something else involved.

That's like saying you can write a word for word copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as long as you don't use the book as the source.

No because Harry Potter is not a collection of facts. Price of goods are.

Enough monkeys and enough time..

And I thought IP law in the states was bad.

You absolutely can copyright lists of facts in most jurisdictions outside the US

In the US it is pretty hard[1], but most other jusdictions find that if the list has some "creative" or "work" element (ie, it isn't just a list of everything) then it can be under copyright (eg [2]).

[1] https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/copyright/lists...

[2] https://www.smh.com.au/national/list-makers-on-solid-copyrig...

That's true in the USA but this is in the UK.

Yes, I could understand (if not also somewhat disagree) with it regarding photos, but "and data"? What does that entail?

You can if you curate the list. Curating requires collecting and processing information, which often can be expensive.

Not in the US you can't. Even if you curate the list, a list of facts can never be copyrighted, only creative expression can be copyrighted.

But other countries have different rules.

See here for all the details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....

So I can just buy a Bloomberg terminal, start broadcasting real time stock prices and collect a fee?

Different situation. You don't buy a terminal, you license it. The license can dictate what you're allowed to do with the data. Rebroadcast the data and you may be just fine on copyright or any other IP, but you violate the license so Bloomberg cancels it.

Bloomberg may not allow you to redistribute those same prices and terminate your membership.

But stock prices are pretty much public knowledge (no one is coming after you for licencing for quoting a price at someone)

Delayed prices for publicly traded stocks are generally available freely. Real time prices and order book though are not, not to mention prices for anything traded OTC like many bonds, swaps, etc.

Certainly, unless you sign some kind of contract with Bloomberg. (Realistically they probably make you sign.)

Stock prices can not be copyrighted.

Yeah, things may differ b/w countries. But the Wikipedia article you linked mentions this:

> In regard to collections of facts, O'Connor wrote that copyright can apply only to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc.—not to the information itself.

So, a list of facts still can be creative and valuable to the society. INAL, but such works should be protected by copyright, or what's the point of copyright in the first place.

Copyright is not like patents. If you arrive at the same result, by a different method, then even if the result is identical, there is no copyright violation.

So "the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc." is very weak. You can copy all the data, and then make your own choice on what to include (for example "everything I can find"), and you would not be violating the copyright.

The quote you gave is for things like making artwork based on certain patterns or letters in the data. But it won't help you if your creative choice is "everything" because there is no creativity there.

> So, a list of facts still can be creative and valuable to the society

A list of facts is not creative, it's simply work. And yes, it might be valuable, but that's not how we decide if something is copyrightable.

> or what's the point of copyright in the first place.

For creativity, rather than effort.

What that means is that if you write a list of e.g. “Top 10 tennis players in my opinion”, then you can hold copyright over that. But if you write “Top 10 tennis players by rating” then you can’t as that’s not a creative expression.

I think just collecting also counts.

I don't think you can own rights to something other people collected and curated though. Though you can own rights to the individual components, but in this case that would be the specific price of something, which doesn't seem like it should be subject to copyright.

> You can't copyright a list of facts

Says who?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com