Trap Streets

Trap streets is a term used to refer to the cartographic convention whereby mapmakers deliberately insert fake places (such as streets and street names) into their maps so as to later be able to demonstrate plagiarism by other cartographers.

For well over a century, the U.S. court system has dealt with copyright infringement lawsuits brought when a cartographer or publishing company believes that their maps have been directly copied by a competitor. Because maps are widely assumed to be depictions of reality, it is difficult to determine whether mapmakers have compiled original research or copied directly from another cartographer in creating their maps (what the cartographer Mark Monmonier has referred to as “editing the competition”). Hence, map companies will at times add streets, street names, towns, or other features, often in out-of-the-way places, so as to later detect copying by competitors. Such deliberate errors are not confined to cartographers. Similar copyright traps have been found in dictionaries and encyclopedias as ways to detect later plagiarism.

While map companies are hesitant to point out their trap streets, such “errors” have been reported in the media in both the United States and the United Kingdom. A detailed discussion of the use of trap streets is found in a 1997 U.S. District Court decision, Alexandria Drafting Co. v. Amsterdam, in which Alexandria Drafting Company sued Franklin Maps for copyright infringement alleging that Franklin plagiarized Alexandria Drafting Company's maps in Franklin Maps’ Philadelphia-area road atlases. One way that lawyers for Alexandria Drafting Company demonstrated this plagiarism was that numerous trap streets that Alexandria Drafting Company had earlier inserted into their maps subsequently appeared in Franklin's maps. However, the use of trap streets to legally demonstrate copyright infringement was called into question in the court's ruling in this case, which found that “false facts,” such as trap streets, are not copyrightable elements.