On 12 Aug 2010 23:51:25 +0100 (BST), Theo Markettos put finger to keyboard
and typed:

In uk.railway Mark Goodge wrote:
I'm assuming, of course, that it is Atos Origin which has actually compiled
the database. It may not be - it may well be National Rail. But, whoever
compiles it, it's subject to database right.

So if I manage to acquire parts of the database by other means, does that
still infringe the database right? Say, for example, that I wrote a very
clever script that searched this newsgroup for threads quoting fares, and
compiled them into a database. Those threads contains facts, and I myself
have never been near the official fares database. But presumably they have
once been extracted by that database, just not by me.

I don't know. I really don't know. It could easily go either way in court,
depending on the arguments made by both sides.

In the Property Bee example, users perform searches as normal (using their
own browser, internet connection, and the official RightMove webpage) but
the results of those searches are also sent to the Property Bee server by
their browser addon. The price a house is currently selling for is a fact.
So is the Property Bee server able to compile a list of these prices, as the
search was neither instigated nor coordinated by the server, despite being
automatically parsed from queries from the commercial database?

In this case, I would have thought not, as RightMove aren't directly
putting work into compiling their own list of prices - they mrely store
data that's provided to them by sellers. It's also arguable that there's no
independent economic value in the database, since the people who earn money
from house moves will always be the agents as they get their income from
the seller/landlord. It isn't doing RightMove any harm for someone else to
republish their data, as they don't earn their money from people viewing
it. But I wouldn't be confident enough to rely on my argument in court!

Mark
--
Blog: http://mark.goodge.co.uk
Stuff: http://www.good-stuff.co.uk