Re: [Treebase-devel] Treebase data license?

[William P. <wil...@ya...>]

On Apr 26, 2012, at 1:16 AM, Hilmar Lapp wrote:

> such laws are quite different internationally

True…  This seems to indicate that under European law, databases acquire rights irrespective of the copyrights of the contributors to the database: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_rights

TreeBASE could easily volunteer to waive its own rights in this respect. 

But with respect to the ownership rights of contributors, does anyone know any country where ideas (e.g. "Napoleon was born in 1769" or, in our case, "chimps are the sister group to humans") are owned or protected with respect to communication of said ideas? (as opposed to implementation or exploitation, such as patent protection on inventions). 

bp