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• @FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2026-04-13 17:10

  > because you don’t own the copyrights, so you can’t sue anyone for copyright infringement. You can't sue for copyright infringement. You can, however, use content which is not able to be copyrighted and also still license (under contract law/EULAs) your product including terms prohibiting copying of the non-copyrightable information. This was settled in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProCD%2C_Inc._v._Zeidenberg >On Zeidenberg's copyright argument, the circuit court noted the 1991 Supreme Court precedent *Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service*, in which it was found that the information within a telephone directory (individual phone numbers) were facts that could not be copyrighted. For Zeidenberg's argument, the circuit court assumed that a database collecting the contents of one or more telephone directories was equally a collection of facts that could not be copyrighted. Thus, Zeidenberg's copyright argument was valid. However, this did not lead to a victory for Zeidenberg, because the circuit court held that copyright law does not preempt contract law. Since ProCD had made the investments in its business and its specific SelectPhone product, it could require customers to agree to its terms on how to use the product, including a prohibition on copying the information therein regardless of copyright protections You can't copyright phone numbers, just like you can't copyright generated code, but you can still create a license which protects your uncopyrightable content and it can be enforced via contract law.

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