Legal implications of Derived Text Formats - a copyright perspective

Abstract

Text and Data Mining (TDM) methods are often used in order to analyse large amounts of text for scientific research. If the analysed text is protected by copyright, the use of such TDM methods has copyright implications. The existing copyright exceptions facilitate TDM within a narrow framework which limits the storage, publication and re-use of datasets. This paper examines the legal framework of converting the source text into a derived text format (DTF) which is no longer protected by copyright in order to allow the use of TDM without legal restrictions. First, the creation itself of a DTF is being examined: it entails copyright relevant acts which are covered by the TDM exception. In a second step the copyright status of the created DTF has to be evaluated based on three criteria: the DTF may not contain elements which are an expression of the intellectual creation of the author of the source material, the source material may not be easily reconstructable based on the DTF and the source material may not be recognizable.

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