Copyright Ruling On Publishing Calculated Results: Common Sense Breaks Out

bfwebster writes "During the past few years, I served as an IT expert witness in BanxCorp v. Costco et al., in which BanxCorp sued Costco and Capital One for citing (with credit) its web-published national averages for CD and money market rates in their advertising. Judge Kenneth M. Karas issued his summary judgment opinion last fall, finding that BanxCorp's published averages are 'uncopyrightable facts' due to the simple calculation involved and the lack of ongoing human judgment in what banks were involved. Here is my summary of his findings, along with a link to the actual ruling."

Average

[James McGuigan]

Its a rather average ruling

Re:Average

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be mean.

Re:Average

[interkin3tic]

It's pretty normal for slashdot.

Being a pedant.

[Anonymous Coward]

In response to the phrase "common sense breaks out," I want to point out that "common sense" is often quite wrong.

The reason the scientific method is so rigorous is because we cannot rely on common sense to answer important questions. Often, a correct answer is very unintuitive and requires understanding of many non-obvious-but-relevant facts as well as a lot of deep thinking.

Common sense is fine when dealing with very simple problems in a very familiar environment, with relatively low impact. It is compl

Re:

[gIobaljustin]

Common sense is fine when dealing with very simple problems in a very familiar environment, with relatively low impact.

I'd say you should just use your brain, rather than relying on "common sense." "Common sense" is not often common, and rarely does it make sense if you think about it.

Re:Average

[Maxo-Texas]

I hate it when you guys are in this mode.

Re:

[davester666]

Slashdot, don't ever deviate from what you do best.

Re:

[Mathinker]

I smell comments about a certain-greek-letter distribution... lurking...

Bad news for Wolfram alpha

[Anonymous Coward]

Wolfram alpha claims most notably claims copyright for all it's results, even when it is a simple mathematical calculation, or simple english to metric conversion.

Re:Bad news for Wolfram alpha

[Opportunist]

They can claim all they want. Law trumps contract.

Re:Bad news for Wolfram alpha

[fustakrakich]

Money trumps law

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump's money, lol.

Re:

[Quirkz]

Well played, Anonymous Coward.

Re:

[rayzat]

Scissors cut money.

Re:

[fustakrakich]

Ah, but rock crushes scissors, and paper (money) covers rock. The house always wins.

Re:

[Absolutely.Geek]

Lizard poisons Spock

Re:

[TechyImmigrant]

Dr Spock parents Mr Spock

Re:

[Lisias]

Chuck Norris beats them all.

Re:

[Lumpy]

There is a reason why the status of Justice is blindfolded. So she does not have to see the piles of money being used to bribe the system.

Re:

[hypergreatthing]

Wolfram trumps Money?

Re:Bad news for Wolfram alpha

[pavon]

I just did some queries and the only copyright statement I see is the standard one at the bottom of their page. They do have a legitimate copyright on their pages, including the layout, design and the content which they created. That notice doesn't necissarily imply that they claim to own the facts that are being displayed. In fact, they frequently provide citations for those facts, which implies that they don't claim to own them.

Re:

[zoffdino]

The difference is Wolfram hasn't sued anybody about that (yet). You can't copyright simple fact like "what's the 2nd derivative of sin(x)". I think they include that claim more to cover their asses than to assert it in the court of law.

Re:

[Baloroth]

Where do they claim that, exactly? As far as I can tell reading Wolfram's licensing page [wolframalpha.com], your claim is 100% completely and utterly false. What they do claim is copyright on their presentation and assemblage of the facts (such as plots, graphs, tables, et alia), but not at all on the facts themselves.

Is it me or does this stink a bit?

[Opportunist]

Namely of trying to use copyright to bury inconvenient facts.

If that would have stood, it would have been trivial to squelch reporting you don't want to happen. Just report it first, then take it out of circulation before it can hit the internet. Afterwards, anyone who tries to tell the world how you fucked up would have been open to a lawsuit.

Re:

[geekoid]

It's you. Since all the facts are well known.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[geekoid]

Except people have one these exact types of cases many times.

in fact, if I ran Banxcorp I would seriously consider getting new lawyers for even trying to sue over this type of thing.
Well, no. I guess if I was BanxCorp, I wouldn't have told my lawyers to sue over it.
Great now I wonder if the lawyer took their own initiative or if there was a meeting where the CEO/Board insisted the lawyers sue.
hmm.. I guess if I was a share holder I would want to know what happened and through the responsible party out.

Re:

[u38cg]

More like their lawyers assembled a case, made some arguments, pointed out it would be difficult but there was a case that could be pleaded, the suits realised that if they won they would have something valuable on their hands, and decided to take a punt.

In light of this ruling

[kjshark]

I withdraw my application to copyright arithmetic.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

not quite the same, but funny never-the-less....
http://www.theonion.com/articles/microsoft-patents-ones-zeroes,599/

Map Data is open, the tiles are just math.

[Anonymous Coward]

I should be able to rip all of the map tiles I want, it's just math on public data.

Re:

[PRMan]

It would be if it were accurate. That's why Thomas Bros. invented the method of putting purposeful mistakes in the data (so, this street really DOESN'T go through after all?!?) so that anyone copying it could be shown to be violating creative copyright. Stick with OpenStreetMap tiles and you should be fine.

Judgment shouldn't matter

[pruss]

I'm a bit concerned by the implicit suggestion that if a lot of individual judgment went into producing the averages, then perhaps they might be copyrightable. IANAL, but it's my understanding that ideas, facts, opinions and judgments are not copyrightable. Only their expressions are, and only when there is creativity in the expression of the idea, fact, opinion or judgment. Whether there was creativity in coming up with the idea, fact, opinion or judgment should be completely irrelevant. Thus, when the judgment is that some number is 3.95%, then an expression of that judgment as "3.95%" is not copyrightable, being quite uncreative, but expressing it as "just a shade under four tenths of a tenth, where a shade is a twentieth of a tenth of a tenth" might be creative enough to be copyrightable.

It may, though, be that the judge is just doing a two-prong attack here: neither is the expression creative nor are the ideas creative either.

Re:Judgment shouldn't matter

[NoOneInParticular]

I think you've got a fair point. In this view, I would say that many accounting reports of the last few decades should be considered creative in nature and therefore copyrightable. It seems the banks agree.

Re:

[PRMan]

Consider a FICO credit score. The algorithm to get this value is not at all obvious from the data sets used to generate it. And it has tremendous value in commerce. So a FICO score is copyrightable and if you want to show one to consumers, you have to make up your own algorithm.

Judge Karas uses modern physics as an analogy

[mpoulton]

From Judge Karas' opinion: "Thus, the output data generated by using Newton’s Second Law of Motion — force equals mass times acceleration, or “F=ma” — would be a series of uncopyrightable facts, even though the output is in some sense an estimation because Newton’s formula fails does not consider relativistic effects."

No wonder he made the right decision on this case.

Re:

[PRMan]

No wonder he made the right decision on this case.

Because he followed the science of a young-earth creationist?

Re:

[ThatsMyNick]

Wonder if he used the right analogy or wonder if he made the right decision?

Never heard of BanxCorp

[Control-Z]

I don't know who they are but I would think BanxCorp would be happy to be mentioned favorably by Costco and Capital One.