🚀 go-pugleaf

>JQ Johnson is probably referring to the Feist-decision (US Supreme Court).

Yes.  I definitely don't understand copyright law, but I agree with Ejan
Mackaay that the law, even in the US, is at present unclear.  If a
bibliography can be copyrighted, then my concern stands _a fortiori_.

I don't know of anyone ever claiming copyright infringement because
someone copied a citation from a published work.  Fair use and all that.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a successful suit if someone were
to copy a large specialized bibliography _in toto_, though.  But I'm
not sure in such a case if the copyright would depend on the _selection_
of the material, or on the _formatting_ of the material.

Suppose I generate a single citation (or perhaps a small number of
related citations) in APA format from the publication data in an article
or something.  APA format is baroque so I've put in a substantial amount
of brow-sweat to get the format of the citation correct.  I want to
copyright the formatted citation, and collect royalties from anyone else
who ever cites that work using the same punctuation.  Can I do so?

As a user who purchases a bibliography in electronic format, I want to
protect my ability to use citations generated from it in documents I
create.  Meanwhile, the vendor presumably wants to protect the electronic
format of the bibliography (and some derivative electronic formats, e.g an
EndNote bibliography exported in ProCite format) from unauthorized
reproduction, but might be willing to grant unlimited reproduction rights
to some derivative works, namely formatted citations in standard formats.

How to provide protection both to the publisher and the end user?

JQ Johnson                              Office: 250E Computing Center
Director of Network Services            Internet: jqj@ns.uoregon.edu
Computing Center, Univ. of Oregon       voice:  (503) 346-1746
Eugene, OR  97403-1212                  fax: (503) 346-4397