[WikiEN-l] Re: Copyright and Britannica Article List

Sat Jun 25 17:48:59 UTC 2005

Fred Bauder wrote:

> If Safeway made a list of products offered by WalMart which Safeway  
> did not offer?

It would depend on how Safeway created the list. If Safeway sends 
employees to WalMart stores to write down every item they can find that 
Safeway doesn't offer, that's entirely legitimate because there's no 
copying (in the copyright sense) involved. If Safeway somehow obtains 
WalMart master internal list of merchandise and takes information from 
it, then they are copying. However, it might still be okay for them, 
because the information is purely factual and frankly, I don't think 
that creating a list of the merchandise you offer qualifies as a process 
of selection in the "creative" sense usually expected by copyright law. 
Rather, if there's a violation of law here, it's likely to be a matter 
of trade secrets.

I think our situation is different. Because our "products" are entirely 
documentary, the only way we can create a list of our competitors' 
products is by copying. And there is definitely a process of selection 
in determining what subjects to cover in an encyclopedia. So this list 
is not simply a copy of purely factual information that has had no 
creative selection or arrangement applied to it. As such, I consider it 
highly problematic.

--Michael Snow