[Gdal-dev] MapTech / BSB Legal Issues

[Richard Greenwood]

The opendwg.org people might have some relevant experience with this sort 
of issue.

Rich

At 03:04 PM 9/10/2003 -0400, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
>GDAL Users,
>
>I have been contacted by Maptech and I have been requested to remove the
>web page where I talk about the BSB file format, and provide source code for
>reading it.
>
>   http://gdal.velocet.ca/projects/bsb/
>
>They seem to be claiming that the BSB file format is copyrighted by them,
>though it wasn't my understanding that a file format could be copyrighted.
>I am not prepared to comply with their request until they can provide some
>sort of supporting information indicating they truely have "ownership" of
>the file format and that it is illegal for applications to support reading
>that file format for the purposes of interoperability.
>
>Maptech has not requested that anyone stop using the code I distribute;
>however, any firms interested in minimizing any possible downstream legal
>concerns may want to proactively drop use of the BSB driver from their
>GDAL builds.
>
>To that end, I have added a "--without-bsb" configure option on Unix.  Just
>add this option when configuring GDAL and no BSB related code will be
>included in your builds.  On Windows I added a line to the nmake.opt
>file related to BSB support.  If the nmake.opt file does not declare
>the BSB_SUPPORTED macro then BSB support and source code will be omitted
>from the build.  The changes went in this afternoon and should appear
>in tonights nightly snapshot.
>
>For those who are not aware, the BSB format is a compressed raster format
>used for distributing government nautical charts from a number of countries
>including Canada and the USA.
>
>While for me the BSB format is if no great importance, it is important to
>me to be able to write my own code to read file formats.  For that reason
>I don't want to immediately cave in till I get some more information on
>whether their claims have any validity.
>
>I am interested in any pointers folks can provide on precidents related
>to copyrighting file formats, or suggestions of an inexpensive
>intellectual property attorney.   Even a student lawyer would help!  I
>don't want to break the law, but I don't want to be give up if I am not.
>
>Best regards,
>
>--
>---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
>I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
>light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
>and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent
>
>
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Richard W. Greenwood, PLS
Greenwood Mapping, Inc.
Rich <at> GreenwoodMap <dot> com
(307) 733-0203
http://www.GreenwoodMap.com