[Foundation-l] Bridgeman v. Corel worldwide for Wikimedia Commons - yes or no?

Fri Aug 22 11:23:50 UTC 2008

Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> Cary Bass wrote:
>   
>> teun spaans wrote:
>>     
>>> While on holiday in Italy i took some pix of plants in a botanical garden.
>>> There was no admittance fee, it was publicly accessible.
>>>
>>> Can i upload the pix of the plants I took there, or does the owner of the
>>> botanical garden has some form of ownership?
>>>       
>> This is not to say that the botanical garden doesn't claim restriction
>> on the use of images taken within its walls (in my experience,
>> non-commercial clauses are the norm).  In fact, such restrictions are
>> quite commonplace for botanical gardens, zoological parks, and many
>> other facilities.  This should not be mistaken for a claim of copyright;
>> and at most they might do is deny you access to their property in the
>> future.
>>     
>
> Actually, I think that a botanical garden could claim copyright on plant 
> layout or somesuch. 

I think the word you are searching for is "topiary". And it
definitely is an art.
> I'm not aware that this has ever happened, however, 
> and of course panorama freedom would apply. Also not a problem when 
> photographing individual plants, unless they are [[living sculpture]]s.
>   

It would be amusing if panorama freedom would apply
to topiary, since the whole point of topiary is the creation
of panorama pleasing to the aesthetic sense.

Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen