In a recent Australian court case Sensis/Telstra failed to protect their “copyright” on their best sellers [sarcasm] the White and Yellow Pages, the Australian telephone directory books. Justice Michelle Gordon is quoted as saying…
None of the works were original. None of the people said to be authors of the works exercised “independent intellectual effort” or sufficient effort of a literary nature” in creating the Works. Further, if necessary, the creation of the works did not involve some “creative spark” or the exercise of the requisite “skill and judgment”. I accept that production of the directories is a large enterprise populated by many contributors (ignoring for the moment the determinative difficulties with authorship outlined above). … However, these facts are not relevant to the Applicants’ claim and… substantial labour and expense is not alone sufficient to establish originality.
A recent court case around television program guides also seems to supports this ruling. So what does this mean regarding factual databases or research data, particularly those collaboratively collected? You clearly still own the physical copy (the bits on a disk) but you might have to be careful about giving access! And if you don’t care who copies it, full steam ahead!!!
source: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2010/44.html