Publishing racecards and copyright ?

[Datapunter]

Does anyone know the latest status on publishing racecards. There was a huge debate about it in 2002 when the BHB wanted to charge millions to newspapers and bookies for publishing fixtures which was overturned. Then there was the court case against William Hill (in 2005 or thereabouts) which went all the way up to the European court. This was not about publication but more about the BHB database copyright. Big difference. Anyhow as far as i know the European Court of appeal ruled in favour of WH and now the whole case comes back to the britisch court of appeal who is supposed to simply apply the ruling. Not sure if this is already done by now. So the question is if i publish a racecard on a website am i infringing on anybody's, (read BHB), copyright ? Or can i consider the info itself to be part of the public domain as by the time i publish it it is already published all over the news and media. Got a bit of trouble looking things up on the net. Nothing specific about it on the BHB website. Most articles Google comes up with are from 2002 or 2005. Tried emailing the BHB but the listed email adresses from the BHB website don't work :\. Any help, anyone ? ( I will be contacting the BHB at some point but i like to have done my homework first )

[robert99]

Re: Publishing racecards and copyright ?

Does anyone know the latest status on publishing racecards. There was a huge debate about it in 2002 when the BHB wanted to charge millions to newspapers and bookies for publishing fixtures which was overturned. Then there was the court case against William Hill (in 2005 or thereabouts) which went all the way up to the European court. This was not about publication but more about the BHB database copyright. Big difference. Anyhow as far as i know the European Court of appeal ruled in favour of WH and now the whole case comes back to the britisch court of appeal who is supposed to simply apply the ruling. Not sure if this is already done by now. So the question is if i publish a racecard on a website am i infringing on anybody's, (read BHB), copyright ? Or can i consider the info itself to be part of the public domain as by the time i publish it it is already published all over the news and media. Got a bit of trouble looking things up on the net. Nothing specific about it on the BHB website. Most articles Google comes up with are from 2002 or 2005. Tried emailing the BHB but the listed email adresses from the BHB website don't work :\. Any help, anyone ? ( I will be contacting the BHB at some point but i like to have done my homework first )

BHB ceased to exist in July 2007 - it is part of HRA/BHA. The William Hill case was about the Copyright and Rights in Database Regs 1997 which implemented the EU Database Directive. The ECJ ruled that BHB did not have such rights, as had not made substantial investment in obtaining, verifying and protecting the data as then made available. The UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 protects certain "literary" types of data but possibly not the type you refer to. It refers to: Literary song lyrics, manuscripts, manuals, computer programs, commercial documents, leaflets, newsletters & articles etc. It also has a clause "Copyright is an automatic right and arises whenever an individual or company creates a work. To qualify, a work should be regarded as original, and exhibits a degree of labour, skill or judgement". This Act was not tested by WH/BHB but that clause would likely apply in that such works did not "qualify". The problem is that one Act uses the word "substantial" the other "a degree of" but its scope may not cover racecards. That information is already in public domain may be irrelevant. You are probably OK on that basis but it is good tactics to give the BHA an opportunity to confirm they have no legal objection. Moral objection is not relevant as the data has continued to have been published for several years with no action on their part. Similarly, any intellectual property rights would not likely apply. You should make your own racecard work from the data, not just cut and paste and do not use other's logos etc.