21 January 2011
Sensis, the Yellow Pages and White Pages division of Telstra, Australia's Telco,
which lost it's appeal to federal court against The Telephone Company, now appeals to high court.
In December 2010 it was upheld by a three-judge federal court, that directories businesses had no claim to copyright protection because they were factual compilations. Any directory's data can be copied and reproduced legally, no matter how much effort and money was invested in collecting the data.
Other directory businesses in Australia and New Zealand are closely watching this case, which has a broad impact over entire industries, such as classifieds, sport and betting results, TV guides, financial data and so on.
This ruling, however, is not one of it's kind, and resembles many other cases around the globe, in which databases have low or none copyright protection.
SiteBlackBox is soon opening an Australian office, to offer it's Bot BlackBox serice to the Australian market, allowing publishers to protect their valuable data by means of technology where law fails to help.