Copyright and Intellectual Property Rights

The Origins of Copyright

Interest in protecting an author's literary property has grown exponentially ever since Gutenberg invented the moveable type printing press in 1440. Though guilds trace their origins back to 1357, the first recorded privilegii (privileges) appeared in Venice, Italy, in 1469, as an exclusive privilege to conduct all printing in Venice for 5 years. Then, in 1486, the first known “copyright” was issued in Venice, giving the author the right to exercise exclusive control over the printed work. As the printing press technology was transferred across the European continent, royalty and governments became concerned with seditious works that were coming from these presses.

In 1557, the English Crown was concerned enough to charter the Stationers' Company, whose function it was to establish a register in which it recorded the literary works for which its members had a monopoly on copying rights or privileges. Even though the law was actually a mechanism for censorship and trade regulation, it was not entirely successful because of the growing number of hidden presses. Eventually, that law was replaced by the Licensing Act of 1662, which, like its predecessor law, was intended to protect the church and state from heretical and seditious literature. Then, in 1710, the Statute of Anne was enacted by the English Parliament, ushering in the first true era of copyright law that protected the ownership interests of authors.

None of these statutory protection mechanisms enacted in England was lost on the American colonies, as each state enacted its own version of a copyright law. One of the earliest cases was Sayre v. Moore, 1 East 361 (1785), which was a claim related to pirated sea charts.

In 1787, the framers of the U.S. Constitution conferred upon Congress under “Article I, Section 8, Clause 8; Patents and Copyrights” the power “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Congress exercised that power and enacted the first federal copyright legislation in 1790, which specifically mentioned “maps and charts” before “book.” And for some 216 years since, Congress has maintained a statutory system for the registration and protection of copyrighted materials, which is codified in Title 17 of the U.S. Code (The Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. §101 et seq.).

Copyright and GIS

Pursuant to the Copyright Act §102(a), “Subject Matter of Copyright,” in general, it states, “Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.” Works of authorship relevant to GIS databases and maps are literary works and pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works. As set forth in §102(b), “In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.” This is referred to as the ideaexpression dichotomy, whereby patents protect the underlying “idea” and copyrights protect the “expression of the idea.” If an author is able to create an original work with a modicum of creativity, then that author is accorded certain exclusive rights in the copyrighted work as set forth in §106 of the Copyright Act.

...