Does anyone have any experience with copyright law?

Okay here goes,

Basically myself and a number of other interested parties wish to create an online database of cultivars of a specific plant group however the official registry organisation which is in charge of the registration of this group of plants (in other words an International Cultivar Registration Authority) is crying foul and claiming that this would infringe on there copyright.

Now what we want to publish is

• Cultivar Name
• Cultivar Description
• Parentage of Hybrid
• Hybridiser
• Registration Number

All of the above information is submitted and supplied by the hybridiser except the registration number so if we gained permission or at the very least made every possible effort to contact the hybridisers (who may well be deceased) then surely we would be well within our rights? even if we used the official directory as a base as the information is not owned by them...
am I being dim?

 

Is all of the information currently in the public domain? I.e. can you already acquire it legally for free?

I'd have thought you probably could.

Copyright law is a funny one. There are different time spans for different types of work. Not sure what this would come under. In any case, you can't copyright protect factual information, only the way it is presented. So for example, if you photocopied the Oxford English Dictionary and sold it, you'd get done, but if you used that dictionary to help you remember the list of English words and their meanings, but wrote your own, you couldn't get done.

Sorry, that's probably as clear as mud, but its the best I can offer on the subject.

 

Pretty much what we were thinking clueless, not all the information is in the public domain for instance we might not know what the parentage is or who the hybridiser was but it's as you say all factual the RHS actually used to be the ICRA I believe

 

Blimey, good luck

 

I wouldn't think it is a good idea to pursue the project if the organisation has been contacted and feels negative about it. This indipendently from the copyright issue. But maybe you could get to an agreement.

But another thing needs to be said. That you would be copying facts and facts cannot change.
So ok they may want all the glory because they were the first to register them, but if the facts are visible to everybody they can expect some interest in them.

 

The main problem we have Java&Me is that the organisation in question seems to be badly managed and is in a different decade to the rest of us... it takes months for any form of reply to questions and takes even longer to get a copy of the directory out of them in the first place, I myself waited 8 months before being told 3rd hand that they didn't have any more in stock and that they have had to re-print so I will have waited more than a year by the time I get one!

The reason they don't want an online database is they currently have no revenue stream other than the physical printed directory (at about £40) and they don't want to spend out on the infrastructure to implement one even when people have previously asked them for permission they saw it as nothing but a threat. (there's no reason why it couldn't be members only)

we will probably implement an online database into our own British society at least this is hopefully one of our main goals after having set-up the society.

so at the moment it's all pie in the sky

 

I say build it, put in online as a beta version, but don't heavily publicise it straight away, and then invite them to have a look and get involved.

They will either do nowt, in which case proceed with your plans at your own pace, or they will have something to say. If they have something to say, see what it is they want to say, and take it from there.