[OSGeo-Discuss] Clarifications on the use of geospatial data in Europe

[Ari Jolma]

I'm trying to understand the legislation, EU directives, and so on as 
they apply to the use of geospatial data.

One thing that especially irritate me is the status of derivative work. 
Assume, that I have a raster DEM and then I use gdal_countour to make a 
contour line dataset from it. The countour lines are clearly a 
derivative work but there are (probbaly) no common bytes between the two 
datasets. What right does the one who has (sui generis) rights on the 
raster DEM have on the contour lines? What rights do I have?

Similarly, If I make a visualization (a map) from geospatial data, I may 
get a copyright on the map but the one who has rights on the geospatial 
data still must have some rights, yes?

If I compute from the raster DEM average elevations of some larger areas 
and make a table of that, does the owner of the rights to the raster DEM 
still have some rights on that table?

If I describe the terrain verbally, what then? :)

I guess there must be guiding legal principles that I'm missing.

Cheers,

Ari

-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Geoinformaatio- ja paikannustekniikka / Geoinformation and positioning
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
tel: +358 9 451 3886 address: POBox 1200, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://www.tkk.fi/~jolma