Will Johnson wrote:
You cannot copyright a fact.
That a certain chemical compound has a certain number (or whatever this is),
is a fact which cannot be copyright. Same as a person's birthdate, or the
last ten mayors of New York.
Certain publishers have, however, claimed with various degrees of
success that it should be possible to claim a "compilation copyright"
on a database full of facts.
See, for example, [[United States copyright law#Compilations
and the sweat of the brow doctrine]] and [[Copyright law of
the United Kingdom#Databases]]. A web search on "sui generis
copyright" is also instructive; one hit is our own article on
the EU [[Directive on the legal protection of databases]].
In particular:
Sui generis right
Copyright protection is not available for databases
which aim to be "complete", that is where the entries
are selected by objective criteria: these are covered
by sui generis database rights. While copyright
protects the creativity of an author, database database
rights specifically protect the "qualitatively and/or
quantitatively substantial investment in either the
obtaining, verification or presentation of the
contents"...
The holder of database rights may prohibit the extraction
and/or re-utilization of the whole or of a substantial
part of the contents...
In effect, this particular Sui generis right officially
legitimizes the "[[Sweat of the brow]] doctrine" which
(in the U.S., at least) had famously been minimized in
[[Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service]].