Academic

Strange Copyright Claims: Copyright and Train Schedules

By Rob Heverly

I was, for awhile, trying to collect strange (ie, largely indefensible) copyright claims. I didn't get a lot of feedback on this, so the project died. You can, of course, always visit Chilling Effects to find these kinds of cases, but there are also reasonable (even if objectionable) claims there, as well. Sometimes, however, when one of these comes to my attention, I have to bring it up. This is one of those times.

A dispute has been simmering for the past week or so over Chris Schoenfeld's creation of an iPhone app to show the train schedules of the NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Schoenfeld also runs the website "StationStops", which focuses on transportation issues north of NYC (and is often critical of the MTA).

According to reports (there are now many, including video), the MTA started with a phone call threatening to "take down" Schoenfeld's site, but then backed off and insisted by letter only that he remove his iPhone app, which they claim was using their copyrighted schedules without a license. Schoenfeld, for his part, says he's willing to license their schedules, but there are two sticking points: 1) the MTA wants royalties for his past use, and a $5,000 up front fee. 2) Schoenfeld wants database access for schedule updates (which he current does not have, which means he manually recreates the schedules himself). The MTA, according to Schoenfeld, is unwilling to negotiate.

I held off blogging about this for awhile because I was sure I was missing something. The MTA's claim sounds in copyright, but I cannot find any way to make myself believe that the MTA has any colorable copyright claim here. In the U.S., "facts" are not protectable under copyright. You might arrange facts in a particular way and gain protection for your arrangement of them, but you cannot copyright facts as such (this is based on the famous, or perhaps infamous, doctrine that grew from the U.S. Supreme Court case of Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., which involved people's names, addresses and phone numbers in a telephone book). As with people's names and phone numbers, the time a train is scheduled to leave and depart a particular station is a fact. According to the latest reports, Schoenfeld is in negotiations with the MTA over the situation, and the EFF has also been in touch with him.

I hope that all the MTA is now negotiating for is access to their database, and that they're no longer continuing to assert their "copyright" claims.

via SlashDot

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on August 23, 2009 (boomark / email).