A legal precedent involving a data model
Some amateur analysis and summarization of Assessment Technologies of WI LLC v. Wiredata Inc, posted on Alan Wernick's site:
- The data model can be copyrighted
- Copyright to the data inputted into the data model is not automatically granted to the creator of the data model, if someone else enters the data
- Reports run against the data in the data model to extract the data are not subject to any copyrights on the data model.
This last is interesting, because reports are defined in part by the structure of the data to be reported, at a very detailed level. So, even though there is a tightly coupled dependency of the report on the copyrighted data structure, intellectual property rights do not flow across that dependency. Reports are not a derivative work of the data model, in summary. (Fascinating, the more I think about it...)
For what it's worth. I am not licensed to practice law and this should in no way be construed as anything but a casual reading by a non-lawyer of some detailed legal analysis.
-Charlie
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