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Can FAQs Be Copyrighted?
scubacuda writes: "Are FAQs copywritable? Judge Barbara B. Crabb, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, in the case Mist-On Systems, Inc. v. Gilley's European Tan Spa, didn't think so."
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READ THE DAMN ARTICLE BEFORE YOU POST IT ON THE MAIN PAGE!
This court case is so banal it doesn't even deserve mention. The plaintiff was suing the defendant on the grounds that it basically ripped off the idea of having a FAQ at all, which is about as asinine as having one publisher sue another for putting a synopsis on the back of a book. It wasn't even over whether one FAQ was a copy of the other - they didn't cover the same questions or use the same answers to those questions that were the same.
What's next, Slashdot posting an article about a court ruling that it is indeed legal for everyone to write books about how to use computer software without paying royalties to O'Rielly?
Even though others have clarified the ruling, I think it's worth noting (again?) that the judge did NOT think FAQs were not "copyrightable." In fact, the copy right of any work is automatically bestowed upon the author, but there is a formal procedure as well for registering a copyright.
The judge ruled that there was no copyright infringement. This ruling does not, in any way, imply that FAQs do not deserve copyright protection. It does, however, set the bar reasonably high for proving copyright infringement for a FAQ-style document.
This is a Good Thing. FAQs on vendors'/retailers sites will often have similar information. Think of the thousands of companies that install windows, or who sell nutritional products or cleaning products or pretty much anything manufactured by someone else. Two competitors could reasonably come up with very similar FAQs about that product category and its use, completely independent of each other.
The good news here is that the Court ruled in a reasonable manner, which we might hope will continue when the CBDTPA hits it in a few years...
someone stole my sig!He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
You know, the /. crowd houses an alarming number of alarmists. I mean, it's good and all that people are ever-vigilant, yadda yadda, but areound here alert is raised just to be called off fully half the time.
If the editors edited instead of simply relaying common memes, maybe this problem would go away. At least a little bit.
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