Since data can be considered "facts," they are not protected by copyright. Compilations of data, such as datasets or databases, however, are treated differently. §103 of the U.S. Copyright Code states that copyright can be extended to compilation, as long as there was some "creative" act of authorship in the assembly of the compilation. The U.S. Supreme Court, in the decision for the case Feist v. Rural, clarified the restrictions and limitations that govern whether or not a compilation of facts can enjoy copyright protection:
- The compilation must show some creative act in the selection (i.e. which facts to include or exclude) or the arrangement (i.e. order in which facts will be organized or presented) of the facts.
- Simply "working hard" to compile a large number of facts does not entail enough of a creative act to confer copyright protection on a compilation (known as the "sweat of the brow" doctrine).
- The copyright protection extends only to those part of the compilation (i.e. the selection and/or arrangement) that constitute the act of creative authorship, not to the underlying facts themselves.
For example, in
Feist v. Rural, the Supreme Court decided that while it may take a lot of time, money, and effort to gather all of the names and phone numbers of residents of particular area and to arrange them in alphabetical order, this does not mean that the white pages (a type of phonebook) enjoys copyright protection. The selection of facts was not creative (all residents' names and phone numbers were collected), and the arrangement (alphabetical order) was also not creative. However, if you were to compile a listing of science fiction novels with strong female protagonists, and then arrange them by the protagonist's country (or planet) of origin, your compiliation
would be protected by copyright. Since the underlying facts would not be protected, however, anyone would be able to take your compilation and re-use it, provided they arranged it in a different way, or only used a subset of the data (selection).
License Restrictions
Though data are not protected by copyright, some databases which are accessed under contract have additional restrictions placed on their use by the contract. For example, a database owner may specify that data obtained from their compilation may only be used for non-commercial purposes, or that any derivative works created with their data may only be made accessible through restricted access (i.e. behind a sign-in wall). Some of the data collections the library provides access to may have these restrictions. If you have any questions or concerns, contact a librarian and they can check on our exact license conditions.