🚀 go-pugleaf

It's my understanding that, at least by British law, you cannot copyright a
list - say the list of the 10 tallest people in the world for example.

I believe this applies to things like word lists, as would be useful for a
spelling checker or word-game.

Note that I don't include dictionaries; the text of a description of a word
is copyrightable.

I do believe, however, that the *form* of a list or document can be
copyrighted, so if I were to write the top 10 tallest people in a decorative
Illuminated Script with lots of twirly bits, my beautifully drawn page would
be copyrightable.

Bearing these points in mind (and I'm not 100% sure I'm correct about them),
am I correct in thinking that if I want an on-line copy of some printed word
list (say the one used in the UK for adjudicating Scrabble games),

   * I would NOT be allowed to scan it -- because that would reproduce
     the *form* of the document?

   * I would NOT be allowed to copy the author's data files, if they were
     on-line anywhere, because that would be theft? (the UK has tightened
     up its hacking laws lately) [and I wouldn't know where to find
     such a thing anyway]

         This would also apply to decoding and extracting the data from a
     commercial spelling checker licensed by a dictionary publishing company.

but

   * I WOULD be allowed to type the words in to a file myself, as long as
     I didn't reproduce the precise layout of the page in my file?  For
     instance, if the original were 60 lines by 4 columns, I could create
     a file of one word per line, or perhaps 80 lines by 3 columns, etc.

Given that I have actually done the latter, with the particular book I
mentioned, would I be likely to get into trouble if I donated the word list
to Gnu, for example?  (At the moment, I'm guarding it jealously since I'll be
using it in the International Computer Scrabble competition in a few weeks
:-)) If I'm likely to be hit by litigation, even if our friendly net lawyers
think I'm probably in the right, I'd be reluctant to release this. On the
other hand, I've spent so damn long typing the stuff in that I'd like to see
it used.  (I've also been hacking some spelling checker code, as alt.sources
readers may have noticed last month)


One more question; what are the ethics of the following:  I've collected
*many* word lists from various truly PD spelling checkers -- words typed in
by users when the word in their file wasn't found.  Is it reasonable to check
this large list of words against a commercial spelling checker, and generate
a new, vetted, wordlist from the words which check out OK? - after all, that's
what I bought the commercial one for - checking words!

Thanks if any qualified lawyers can answer these questions (In either UK or US
law; pref both!).

Regards,

   Graham. <gtoal%uk.ac.ed@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk>