Re: Standards (yet again) was RE: Use of XML ?

[John Cowan <jcowan@reutershealth.com>]

Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:


> http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/ip01058e.html#misappropriation


A very useful reference!  Other pages point out that misappropriation
is a peculiarly U.S. tort, not existing even in the Commonwealth,
to say nothing of the rest of the world, and that it has in
general been limited to factual situations (quoting the U.S.
3rd Circuit in 1997) in which:

 
# (i) the plaintiff generates or collects information at some cost or expense

# (ii) the value of the information is highly time-sensitive
# (iii) the defendant's use of the information constitutes free riding on

#       the plaintiff's costly efforts to generate or collect it
# (iv) the defendant's use of the information in direct competition with

#      product or service offered by the plaintiff
# (v) the ability of other parties to free-ride on the efforts of the plaintiff

#     would so reduce the incentive to produce the product or service that

#     its existence or quality would be substantially threatened ... in effect

#     to cut off the service by rendering the cost prohibitive in comparison

#     with the return.


Can anyone seriously believe that any, still less all, of these apply to
XML and SGML, or W3C and ISO?


> Part of the idea is that if a misappropriation destroys the marketability 
> of information (and SGML will pass the sweat of the brow tests easily as 
> well as demonstrate originality), then a copyright violation has occurred 
> despite the rewriting of the text.


Misappropriation is precisely *not* copyright violation; the whole point
of INS v. AP was that the AP news (which INS copied) was not
copyrightable as such.

> Without them, XML might not pass the "laugh test" 
> and the W3C might well have to defend itself in court for 
> taking international standards and then calling itself, 
> a standards organization,


Where does W3C call itself a standards organization?

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