Questions on copyright infringement

By Anonymous on Sun, 11/15/2015 - 14:15

Forums

1. Many of the memorial pages at Find A Grave have copies of recent obituaires.  Am I correct that such copies are copyright infringements (assuming that the creators of the pages didn't obtain permission)?

2. I understand that facts are not copyrightable, but that the presentation of facts is copyrightable.  So, if I learn from a recent newspaper obituary or Find A Grave that John Smith was born in the year 1990, I assume that it's okay for me to put that information in my genealogy database.  And okay to print out a report with that information. And give that report to someone else.

3.  But I have source B that says that John Smith was born on April 1, and an additional source C that says that he was born in Oregon, and a final source D that says that he was born in Portland.  I want to indicate in my genealogy program where all these separate bits of information came from rather than just generically referring to all the sources (therefore requiring someone else, or me later, to look up each individual source to see what particular info it had).  I assume that if I simply say in my notes that the month and day of birth of April 1 came from source B and that the state of birth of Oregon came from source C, etc., there would be no copyright infringements.

4.  On the other hand, if I have a source with a copyright that gives me all of the typical information that I look for and I copy into my software, without permission, the actual text -- for example:  "Children: ... John Smith, born April 1, 1990, married on July 14, 2015 in Salem, Oregon, Lucy Johnson, born November 11, 1992, Seaside, Oregon" -- then I have infringed the copyright because I am copying the formatting of the information, not just the facts?

5.  Inherent in my questions above is my assumption that my copying of the information for my own personal use can be an infringement, even if I never give any of that information in a printed report to someone else, never repeat that information on a website, etc.  Is my assumption correct?

Thanks in advance for helping me understand the complexities of copyright law.

Dennis

Submitted byEEon Sun, 11/15/2015 - 14:34

Dennis, EE does not have a copyright lawyer on staff, so our response here is limited. As researchers and writers, we may use a small quote from another source, so long as we use quotation marks and identify that source. Quoting a passage from an obituary in our research notes would be permissible. Extracting details from an obituary to put into our private, unpublished, non-commercial database would be permissible—with the caveat, of course, that each extracted bit of data should identify its source. Copying all of a current article from one website onto another website, without explicit permission, is not a practice that EE would recommend.

Beyond this point, The Legal Genealogist (http://legalgenealogist.com/ask-tlg) would do better justice to your questions.