On 21/07/13 05:30, Mikael wrote:
It has been proposed on Swedish Wiktionary to use a significant amount of material from a dictionary [1] which allegedly is out of copyright due to only having been protected under the law of "katalogskydd" ('catalogue protection') which is in effect for 15 years after publication. The last edition was published in 1989, the author died in 1986, and the last reprinting was done in 1999 -- though mere reprints are not supposed to grant extensions of the time of protection.
Assuming that the assessment about the material falling under the "katalogskydd" is correct, is that sufficient for WMF to be comfortable hosting the material, or does US copyright law interfere in any way?
\Mike
(cc-ing to Wiktionary-l to see if anyone there has experience with this particular situation.)
I am not a lawyer, and nothing I write here would be legal advice, but...
If I recall correctly, under US copyright case law a word's definition cannot be copyrighted. There are only a limited set of ways to express the definition of a term, and it is recognized this puts an undue burden on new works.
However, a *collection* of terms may be copyrighted under the database portion of the copyright rules.
But if such a collection makes up a very small portion of your own collection (I believe there is a guideline of 10-15%) then its inclusion in your database does not constitute an infringement.
What this means is: under US law (which is the standard applied to WMF projects) sv.WT could likely include the contents.
What this *does not address* is: the person(s) adding the material to the project, who may be subject to other legal jurisdictions.
Amgine