Hello List,
My last question re: copyright got some good feedback from the list, so I want to see if you all have any suggestions for my next query...
Let's say that I'm interested in creating an online index to Latin dictionaries. My index will include lemmata drawn from many different lexica, in print and out of print. Just the lemmata - not the dictionary entries. What are the copyright implications? Does a lemma in a dictionary count as "intellectual property"? Does reprinting the entire list of lemmata from a dictionary count as infringement?
Or do I really need to talk to a lawyer?
Thanks, Dot
I'm not a lawyer, though I play one with the neighbours. But I'd say you are adding significant intellectual work, and not obviously reproducing the text of the dictionary. If you are dealing with a whole bunch of dictionaries, then you are certainly on safe ground, I'd guess. If you are reproducing just one, then you might be in more trouble, though I'd guess not, since the lemma list is not the point of your collection. Presumably an index is similar to a concordance.
-d
On Tue, 2006-06-06 at 10:36 -0400, Dot Porter wrote:
Hello List,
My last question re: copyright got some good feedback from the list, so I want to see if you all have any suggestions for my next query...
Let's say that I'm interested in creating an online index to Latin dictionaries. My index will include lemmata drawn from many different lexica, in print and out of print. Just the lemmata - not the dictionary entries. What are the copyright implications? Does a lemma in a dictionary count as "intellectual property"? Does reprinting the entire list of lemmata from a dictionary count as infringement?
Or do I really need to talk to a lawyer?
Thanks, Dot
Hi Dot, hello everybody,
Let's say that I'm interested in creating an online index to Latin dictionaries. My index will include lemmata drawn from many different lexica, in print and out of print. Just the lemmata - not the dictionary entries. What are the copyright implications? Does a lemma in a dictionary count as "intellectual property"? Does reprinting the entire list of lemmata from a dictionary count as infringement?
My interpretation would be that lemmata are part of the word pool one can have from the knowledge of a language. And as you want to point to the lexicon or dictionary it appears to me as a citation which usually is covered by copyright laws as scientific use of a work. And as you are compiling an index of different works you are not really reprinting them but creating another work which should be allowed anyway. If at last you add lemmata on your own you pass the limits of just reusing what has been there already. ;-)
Anyway: These are only opinions and by no means a legal advice.
Or do I really need to talk to a lawyer?
That can't be wrong to have one at hand these days. :-(
Best, Torsten
I suspect one answer to this question is implied by the practice (possibly apocryphal, but I wouldn't be surprised were it true) of dictionary editors inventing non-existant words so that they can prove when someone else has copied their list of lemmata.
Is this another of those cases where what the publishers of the dictionary would like to believe and what we as scholars would like to believe are at odds, however? If so, then until a case has been tested in court, even a lawyer's opinion would be at best speculative. (i'm eager to hear others' experiences, however.)
Best,
Gabriel
the practice (possibly apocryphal, but I wouldn't be surprised were it true) of dictionary editors inventing non-existant words
Gabriel, google "esquivalience" for at least one non-apocryphal, intentional example of this, and "dord" for an accidental instance.
I've asked a US English dictionary editor about Dot's question, and she replied:
"[L]emmata are not copyrightable, unless they do not exist other places (like the copyright trap with esquivalience). As long as they can show that they know of the words' existence in another text, I'd say they were fine."
Another existing example that his would not be a problem, is the case of Scrabble wordlists. Merriam-Webster's Official Scrabble Players Dictionary is itself a compilation of the wordlists of 15 US college dictionaries, and it is surely protected by all sort of nasty copyright. But on the internet there are readily available lists of legal words from all Scrabble jurisdictions.
Your use would be quite transformative, educational, and a factual statement in the vein of a concordance or index.
Or do I really need to talk to a lawyer?
It wouldn't hurt, as long as you don't take "no" for an answer. Cfr. http://chillingeffects.org/
O.
I am afraid that even the list of lemmata (without the entries) is considered to be intellectual property, at least it is in the Netherlands and Belgium. I would ask permission from the editors of each lexicon.
Katrien Depuydt (lexicographer; Institute for Dutch Lexicology, Leiden, the Netherlands)
Dot Porter wrote:
Hello List,
My last question re: copyright got some good feedback from the list, so I want to see if you all have any suggestions for my next query...
Let's say that I'm interested in creating an online index to Latin dictionaries. My index will include lemmata drawn from many different lexica, in print and out of print. Just the lemmata - not the dictionary entries. What are the copyright implications? Does a lemma in a dictionary count as "intellectual property"? Does reprinting the entire list of lemmata from a dictionary count as infringement?
Or do I really need to talk to a lawyer?
Thanks, Dot
Quoting Katrien Depuydt depuydt@inl.nl:
I am afraid that even the list of lemmata (without the entries) is considered to be intellectual property, at least it is in the Netherlands and Belgium. I would ask permission from the editors of each lexicon.
This is interesting. Would it be too troublesome of me to ask what precisely is meant by "is considered"? The publishers consider it so? Common perception? It is explicitly enshrined in copyright law to be so? It has been tested in court and held up?
(This is a genuine question: so much of even expert legal opinion on these matters can be in doubt unless the claim has been tested. On the other hand, if you work for a college or similar institution, you will no doubt be under strict instructions to cover your back, so the unsatisfactory answer is that you should consider something under copyright and requiring permission unless it is absolutely unmistakably the case that it is not...)
Yours continuing to seek disambiguity where there probably is none,
G
Even a mere list of lemmata is the result of a serious decision making process, consisting a.o. of defining selection criteria, defining the spelling of an entry (in historical dictionaries), etc. And it is usually based on a corpus of texts, sometimes compiled by the lexicographers themselves.
It has been tested in court. Someone had published a cd with a rhyming dictionary and had used the list of lemmata of the Van Dale dictionary of Dutch. Van Dale won the law suit. It was about 10, maybe 15 years ago.
Katrien
Gabriel BODARD wrote:
Quoting Katrien Depuydt depuydt@inl.nl:
I am afraid that even the list of lemmata (without the entries) is considered to be intellectual property, at least it is in the Netherlands and Belgium. I would ask permission from the editors of each lexicon.
This is interesting. Would it be too troublesome of me to ask what precisely is meant by "is considered"? The publishers consider it so? Common perception? It is explicitly enshrined in copyright law to be so? It has been tested in court and held up?
(This is a genuine question: so much of even expert legal opinion on these matters can be in doubt unless the claim has been tested. On the other hand, if you work for a college or similar institution, you will no doubt be under strict instructions to cover your back, so the unsatisfactory answer is that you should consider something under copyright and requiring permission unless it is absolutely unmistakably the case that it is not...)
Yours continuing to seek disambiguity where there probably is none,
G
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Daniel O'Donnell -
Dot Porter -
Gabriel BODARD -
Katrien Depuydt -
Orion Montoya -
Torsten Schaßan