Copyright Ruling On Publishing Calculated Results: Common Sense Breaks Out

bfwebster writes "During the past few years, I served as an IT expert witness in BanxCorp v. Costco et al., in which BanxCorp sued Costco and Capital One for citing (with credit) its web-published national averages for CD and money market rates in their advertising. Judge Kenneth M. Karas issued his summary judgment opinion last fall, finding that BanxCorp's published averages are 'uncopyrightable facts' due to the simple calculation involved and the lack of ongoing human judgment in what banks were involved. Here is my summary of his findings, along with a link to the actual ruling."

Comments

Bad news for Wolfram alpha

[Anonymous Coward]

Wolfram alpha claims most notably claims copyright for all it's results, even when it is a simple mathematical calculation, or simple english to metric conversion.

Between companies, there is a differnt law.

[houghi]

This is between companies, so the laws are differently, or at least interpreted differently.

Now try that with a company on one side and an individual on the other side. Now switch sides.

Logic would say that there would be no differnce. The reality would be differnt.

Map Data is open, the tiles are just math.

[Anonymous Coward]

I should be able to rip all of the map tiles I want, it's just math on public data.