[NetBehaviour] Australian Judge Rules Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted.

marc garrett marc.garrett at furtherfield.org
Mon Feb 15 10:31:20 CET 2010


Australian Judge Rules Facts Cannot Be Copyrighted.

"Last week, an Australian Judge ruled that copyright laws do not apply 
to collections of facts, regardless of the amount of effort that was 
spent collecting them. In this case, the case surrounded the 
reproduction of entries from the White and Yellow Pages, but the ruling 
referred to a previous case involving IceTV, which republishes TV 
guides. Does this mean that other databases of facts, such as financial 
data, are also legally able to be copied and redistributed?" Slashdot.org.

Telstra loses as copyright blowback continues.

Yet another Australian copyright decision, this one handed down on 10 
February, has gone against the pro-copyright owner trend of recent decades.

Telstra and Sensis have lost in the Federal Court of Australia before 
Justice Michelle Gordon in seeking to protect claimed copyright in White 
Pages and Yellow Pages.

The defendants were Phone Directories Company Pty Ltd, its directors and 
others. The company has been competing against Telstra/Sensis since the 
mid-1990s. Cleverly, at least initially the business of Phone 
Directories Company Pty Ltd produced directories for regional areas, 
places where Telstra was not active or not greatly active.

http://tinyurl.com/yhzrlzv



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