[Foundation-l] Dead Sea Scrolls

Ryan Kaldari rkaldari at wikimedia.org
Tue Sep 27 18:35:31 UTC 2011


As far as law outside the U.S. is concerned, the Feist decision has had 
more of an impact than Bridgeman (probably because it was a Supreme 
Court decision). Since Feist (1991), many common 
law<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law> countries have moved 
towards applying the "threshold of originality" standard and away from 
the "sweat of the brow" standard.[1] Canada, for example, now largely 
follows Feist. Even UK jurisprudence is gradually transitioning (and is 
currently inconsistent). (Australia, however, is still decidedly sweat 
based). The enactment of database rights throughout Europe has made this 
transition easier, as even without sweat of the brow, database IP is now 
protected (independent of copyright) throughout Europe.

Israel is both a common law and civil law country. I'm not aware of any 
court cases in Israel that have addressed this issue so far. It will be 
interesting to see how this issue plays out there. For the record, 
though, I would never trust a museum to give me a accurate assessment of 
the state of copyright law in a given country.

1. Gervais, Daniel J. (Summer 2002). "Feist Goes Global: A Comparative 
Analysis of the Notion of Originality in Copyright Law". /Journal of the 
Copyright Society of the U.S.A./ *49*: 949--981.

Ryan Kaldari

On 9/26/11 3:39 PM, Anthony wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Ray Saintonge<saintonge at telus.net>  wrote:
>> On 09/26/11 12:27 PM, emijrp wrote:
>>> If originals don't have copyright, how can The Israel Museum claim any
>>> copyright for scans which lack originality?[1]
>>>
>>> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp.
>> The cited case is a US case, and not necessarily binding in other countries.
> It's not even binding on other districts within the US.
>
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