Canada Post Files Copyright Lawsuit Over Crowd-sourced Postal Code Database

An anonymous reader writes "Canada Post has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Geolytica, which operates GeoCoder.ca, a website that provides several geocoding services including free access to a crowd-sourced, compiled database of Canadian postal codes. Canada Post argues that it is the exclusive copyright holder of all Canadian postal codes and claims that GeoCoder appropriated the database and made unauthorized reproductions. GeoCoder compiled the postal code database by using crowdsourcing techniques, without any reliance on Canada Post's database, and argues that there can be no copyright on postal codes and thus no infringement (PDF)."

Comments

Eh?

[paiute]

In Socialist Canada, Post Office stamps you!

Re:Eh?

[tibit]

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett is required reading, then :)

Re:Eh?

[RobbieThe1st]

It's definitely required /watching/: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett's_Going_Postal

Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I think the idea of copyrighting post codes is stupid, surely the source of the data doesn't matter. That is like taking a picture, looking at each pixel, manually selecting a similar color pixel and creating a new image, then claiming that you own copyright on this new image. Postcodes should be as uncopyrightable as information about the boundary between counties.

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[firex726]

Yea, didn't the US deal with this years ago with regards to phone numbers?

The factual aspect of the numbers could not be copyrighted, only the formatting or something like that.

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[king neckbeard]

Copyright provides for independent authorship, so if the database was truly compiled independently, it wouldn't be copyright infringement, even if Canada idiotically allows postcode databases to be copyrighted.

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[digitig]

No.. much more like someone taking the first picture of a building and then claiming all other pictures of the building violate some copyright of the first picture taker.

You mean like this?

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this sounds radical, but sometimes people note that there laws in a different country that - shockingly - ALREADY ACTUALLY HANDLE A PARTICULAR SITUATION CORRECTLY.

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[Kneo24]

Why would you post a link to ONE picture where you need to be logged in to view? I realize my comment is off-topic, but when you're having a public discussion and you're trying to use examples to back up your points so they're more clear, I can't help but wonder why you would choose an example behind a wall that we have to now get over.

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[Smauler]

If you blatantly make an analog copy of the Mona Lisa, that's copyright infringement even if the target work doesn't have the exact same colour values as the original.

Wait, have they extended copyright duration again?

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[LordLimecat]

JK Rowling cannot copyright the individual facts around the fictional universe she has created, I do not believe, so if you were to create a fan sequel to one of her books it would not be a problem with copyright I do not believe (though it MIGHT be a trademark problem).

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[Megane]

After years of work, you present your result to the general public, and it looks, well, like this [comic-freaks.com].

It ends up like "(http://www.comic-freaks.com/images/stories/mona-lisa/mona-lisa-03.jpg)
You are not authorised to view this resource.
You need to login." on a web page covered with scammy ad links? Wow, no wonder Canada Post is so pissed off.

Re:Right Idea, Wrong Argument

[cpt kangarooski]

JK Rowling cannot copyright the individual facts around the fictional universe she has created, I do not believe, so if you were to create a fan sequel to one of her books it would not be a problem with copyright I do not believe (though it MIGHT be a trademark problem).

Wow, no.

Facts that are true (or presented as true, e.g. a conspiracy theory, since the author shouldn't get to have it both ways) are treated as being uncopyrightable. Fictional facts, OTOH, usually are copyrightable, at least in aggregate, since copying them is to copy little snippets from the creative work in which they originate. The Seinfeld Aptitude Test case, Castle Rock Entertainment Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group, 150 F.3d 132 (2nd Cir. 1998), is a fairly good example of why your idea wouldn't work.

Further, a straight-up sequel would run afoul of the derivative right that is a part of copyright, and would clearly be infringing. And there would pretty certainly be trademark problems as well.

If I were a lawyer in the U.S...

[American Patent Guy]

I'd say that postal codes aren't "works of authorship" entitled to copyright protection. It looks like the canadian lawyer is making a similar argument from paragraph 23 on.

Oh, wait ... I am a lawyer ...

Re:If I were a lawyer in the U.S...

[American Patent Guy]

There are such rights in the U.S., but to copy a database, you must first have access to it. When was GeoCoder given access to the Canadian Post files? As the GeoCoder DB is an independent, crowdsourced work, the only claim the Canadian Post could have is in its contents.

Some conflicts with this story

[dmomo]

My first reaction was: It's a Dangerous path, once "facts" can become copyrighted. Then I (gasp) RTFA.

There are two claims made by the article:

1) Canada Post argues that it is the exclusive copyright holder of all Canadian postal codes
If the issue is #1, then this is truly asinine, in my opinion. I am no scholar of copyright law, especially how it is applied in Canada. This claim may or may not be true. However, I could find no evidence the the Canada Post made such a claim. I may not have searched through the links provided with enough thoroughness. But, could it be that the author of the article either assumed it, or simply made it up? Does anyone have support for this claim, which to me seems absurd?

2) Canada Post says GeoCoder appropriated the database and made unauthorized reproductions.
If the issue is #2 They claim that there were "unauthorized reproductions" of their database made. This could be a legitimate copyright infringement. Again. I see no evidence that Canada Post makes this claim either.

In fact, I see no mention of "copyright" other than in the article. There is just this post:
http://geocoder.ca/?sued=1 ... which states that Canada Post is suing for lost revenue.

Now, these claims may in fact be true, and I don't necessarily doubt them. I would however like to see solid links to sources, for instance the text of the lawsuit. It's difficult to figure out what is fact and what is speculation.

Re:Some conflicts with this story

[MacGyver2210]

The URL having sued=1 in it is making it hard for me to stop laughing.

Re:Some conflicts with this story

[MacGyver2210]

If you read the Statement of Defence on that page, in section 29 they pretty clearly outline why this is nonsense:

29. The Plaintiff's claim to copyright in the CPC Database would lead to absurd results. Individual Canadians and businesses regularly and frequently collect and use postal codes in address books, mailing lists, customer lists, supplier lists, and an infinite variety of lists. If the Plaintiff's assertion of
copyright in the CPC Database were well founded, all of these collections of addresses and the postal codes therein would reproduce parts of the CPC Database and so would infringe copyright. The result would be copyright infringement on a massive, near-universal scale, since none of these uses are
licensed. Entire fields of economic activity – directory publishers, database distributors, online lookup tools, even telephone directories such as the Yellow Pages – would overnight be relegated to the status of infringers.

Also, it is of note that GeoCoder is saying even the Canada Post corp doesn't own the copyright, and that the database cannot be copyrighted as a collection of facts:

26. Even though Geolytica did not copy the CPC Database, Canada Post also does not own copyright in the CPC Database as a compilation. Geolytica denies the Plaintiff's claim to the contrary at paragraph 5 of the Statement of Claim.
27. Geolytica pleads that the CPC Database is itself a fact. The CPC Database can only substantially take on one form, wherein this compilation of facts remains a non-copyrightable fact.
28. Further, the selection and arrangement of data into the CPC Database involves no skill and judgment. Although there may have been an exertion of labour to establish a postal code designation system, Canada Post Corporation did not, and does not, exert a non-trivial amount of skill and judgment to create and maintain the CPC Database. The CPC Database simply collects “all the postal codes”. This is a “collection”, not a “selection” or “arrangement”. Nor does the Canada Post Corporation exhibit skill or judgement in collecting “all the postal codes”.

postal codes should be public domain

[morethanapapercert]

Postal codes were created by Canada Post for its own convenience in sorting and delivering mail. On that level, the data belongs to Canada Post and only they can change it. However; Canada Post is a crown corporation, all the data it generates is done using a mixture of public funds and postage revenues. Just as with scientific research results, I argue that the use of public funds mandates that the resulting data be freely accessible to anyone. Canada Post can not stop anyone from publishing this data, even for profit. I note that in my province, and presumably all the others, there are phone books other than the one published by Bell. These local phone directories include postal codes as part of the address listings as a vale-add to differentiate themselves from the more well known Bell phone directories.

Canada Post hasn't sought to stop these directories from including the postal codes, so I don't believe it should seek to stop an online publication either.

In other respects, Canada Post has shown itself to be a fairly forward thinker for a government operation. To me, the fact that Geolytica has created their website is proof that there is a market opportunity there that Canada Post has overlooked. Canada Post could; and I dare say should, simply out compete Geolytica by creating a more comprehensive and easier to use web page of its own. Canada Post might not be able to compete with the US listings Geolytica also has, but I think there is much room for improvement on the look and feel of the web page itself. (How many run of the mill users even know the difference between HTML, XML and JSON let alone *care*? geocoder.ca uses google maps, but it doesn't look as if they took any design ideas from Google)

Re:postal codes should be public domain

[ArundelCastle]

Canada post is entirely free of govn't cash lately - it is self sustaining off of postage costs and such.

No. That would imply it has privatized, and it has not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Post_Corporation#Privatization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_corporations_of_Canada#Federal

You might be thinking of Air Canada?

How can postal codes be "copyrighted" ???

[dryriver]

A postal code is a short numeric sequence that makes it easier for the postman to deliver a package/letter to the right building/apartment. It is really not much different, functionally speaking, from a telephone number, an email address or a room number. Are telephone numbers copyrighted? Don't think so. Are email addresses copyrighted? I've never heard of such a thing. Copyrighting room numbers in a building? Not even technically possible. And who pays for postal codes to be created/used in the first place? The Canadian taxpayer. That should make postal codes a "public good", owned collectively by the taxpaying Canadian public. Creating a free listing of postal codes, where anyone can look up postal codes, is a convenience, and a service rendered to the public. And a good one too, since it is "free", and nobody profits from it. Besides, if search engines can index the entire f___ing Internet, without anyone crying "Oy! That's my copyrighted webpage you are indexing!", how can a simple "Canadian postal code lookup function" be a breach of copyright? If the article is correct, the site in question didn't even copy the Postal Services postal code database. It built its own, from user contributions. I really don't see how "copyright" even figures into this case...

Why?

[Hentes]

A guy creates a site that makes it easier for customer's to use their service, why the hell are they suing him?

CP is Price-Gauging

[benad]

From personal experience, Canada Post increased ten-fold their database licensing costs. My company tried to negotiate, and the best CP proposed is some rebates for the first two years, so of course we had to drop them. So, Geocoder, good luck!

Re:CP is Price-Gauging

[benad]

For the "redistributable license", meaning you use the data for something other than mailing junk mail, the price went from 4K to around 45K per year. FYI, USPS licensed data of the same kind is around 2K. The same phenomenon happened in Australia (it was about 80K IIRC), again asserting bogus copyright claims over public information.

Common law countries are split about this

[tepples]

Common law countries are split about this. In the USA, phone numbers cannot be copyrighted, but in Australia, for example, they can.

Re:Common law countries are split about this

[rolfwind]

So if I put my phone number on my business card... the phone company could sue me for copyright infringement, in theory?

Re:Common law countries are split about this

[mrbester]

There is a good reason for that: both Canada and Australia are Commonwealth countries, i.e. they used to be part of the British Empire. Britain's telephone system was owned by the General Post Office (a Government Agency - deliberate capitalisation) who issued numbers. These were Crown Copyright (same as Ordnance Survey maps still are) and you had to pay to use the base data. The same applies to this day for post codes in the UK. Thus the system of telephone numbers and postal addresses being defined and maintained by government agencies and protected by copyright naturally was used in the colonies.

Re:Common law countries are split about this

[tepples]

No, an individual phone number is not copyrightable, but a collection of them is. In the United States, an exhaustive collection of real-world facts, such as all numbers issued to telephone customers in a particular service area, precludes copyrightability (Feist v. Rural).

Re:Common law countries are split about this

[cpt kangarooski]

No, an individual phone number is not copyrightable, but a collection of them is.

Well, Feist is a little more detailed than that.

Basically the issue is creativity of the selection and arrangement of uncopyrightable facts. If the selection and arrangement are creative, it can be copyrightable. A phone book selecting all listed numbers in a geographic area, arranging them by last name alphabetical order is not creative. But a phone book that listed only the telephone company's favorite subscribers, in order by the color of their houses or buildings, quite likely would be copyrightable, for whatever good that does the phone company.

Tele-Direct (Publications) Inc.

[Animats]

In the US, this issue was settled in Feist vs. Rural Telephone, which was about copyright in telephone directories. The US Supreme Court ruled that such collections of facts are not copyrightable on constitutional grounds. In Canada, there's Tele-Direct (Publications) Inc. v. American Business Information, Inc, which covers much the same ground. "Labour alone not determinative of originality ... Compilation so obvious, commonplace not meriting copyright protection."

I'm surprised CanadaPost even raised the issue.

Re:2 days later

[Barbara, not Barbie]

If it was only 2 days later, it sure as h*** didn't go via Canada Post.

It's not like anyone uses them all that much any more. The month-long postal strike last summer (and the subsequent month to clear out the backlog) was the final straw for a lot of people.

Re:undefended copyright...

[Stormthirst]

It may also be that FedEx, UPS, Purolator and other couriers have already splashed out the $5000 to buy a copy of the database, in order to make the delivery of their mail easier.

Also, Copyright != Trademarks. In order to defend a trademark, you have to be actively using it. Not so with copyright.

The reason why Canada Post hasn't sued the companies you describe is because it benefits them for those post codes be out there - it encourages companies and people to use Canada Post's services.

Re:2 days later

[Mashiki]

I kinda find it funny that your post is marked funny, but damn if that isn't the truth. I've switched to DHL for my regular mail if it has to be sent. I can send a letter from ontario to northern alberta or the territories for under $2. And it'll get there within 3-5 days. The last time I sent a letter via canada post it took nearly a month. Including the week it sat in edmonton.

Re:undefended copyright...

[mark-t]

For better or worse, they have to show that they've always vigourously defended their copyrights in the past, otherwise it's fair game like Aspirin or Kleenex

You are conflating copyrights and trademarks.

They are different. Trademarks must be defended as you describe. Copyrights do not.

Re:2 days later

[LinuxIsGarbage]

They are still one of the most economical ways to receive online purchases. Especially the $0.99 shipping included cables from Hong Kong.

And unlike UPS, Fedex, etc. if you aren't home for delivery of a parcel, picking it up at the local pharmacy is a lot more convenient than:
-Going to the depot in the industrial park 45 minutes away before 5PM
-Or allowing them to leave a computer on your front doorstep in the rain while you're at work.

For your edification

[ArundelCastle]

Please try to keep in mind, these laws are old, and not being under the reign of a monarch is new. These issues will affect every former UK colony.

It is really not much different, functionally speaking, from a telephone number, an email address or a room number. Are telephone numbers copyrighted? Don't think so. Are email addresses copyrighted? I've never heard of such a thing.

Australia and NZ are still hashing it out, actually.
http://www.baldwins.com/australian-and-new-zealand-copyright-law-for-databases-compilations-and-directories/

And who pays for postal codes to be created/used in the first place? The Canadian taxpayer. That should make postal codes a "public good", owned collectively by the taxpaying Canadian public. Creating a free listing of postal codes, where anyone can look up postal codes, is a convenience, and a service rendered to the public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#Canada
"Permission to reproduce Government of Canada works, in part or in whole, and by any means, for personal or public non-commercial purposes, or for cost-recovery purposes, is not required, unless otherwise specified in the material you wish to reproduce."

And a good one too, since it is "free", and nobody profits from it.

The "otherwise specified" part would seem to be the $5000 Canada Post wants to charge for its directory. Which it has the right to do. Statistics Canada also charges for its data, one of the few places where government documents are not free. Why? Because information has value. The Do Not Call List has a trivial price attached to it, and has been exploited to high hell because foreign telemarketers can afford to do it and are not bound by our laws. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Do_Not_Call_List#Criticism

Besides, if search engines can index the entire f___ing Internet, without anyone crying "Oy! That's my copyrighted webpage you are indexing!",

Ok, now you're just starting to look silly and ill informed...
http://searchengineland.com/proposed-uk-law-would-immunize-search-engines-against-copyright-claims-33336
http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/08/industry-google-afp-dc-idUSN0728115420070408
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1457-Search-Engines-Indexing-and-Copyright-Law
http://www.blogstudiolegalefinocchiaro.com/wordpress/?p=258

how can a simple "Canadian postal code lookup function" be a breach of copyright? If the article is correct, the site in question didn't even copy the Postal Services postal code database. It built its own, from user contributions. I really don't see how "copyright" even figures into this case...

It's not the engine, it's the data. Postal codes were *authored*, there is no question about that.

Re:2 days later

[Grieviant]

Agreed. UPS and Fedex charge a king's ransom and the pick-up locations are not even reachable by public transit in many cities. The USPS + Canada Post combo for shipments from the States is the only economical way, and in my experience it's not nearly as slow as many are claiming.