Protecting IP of video subject I have several projects and inventions the development of which I would like to chronicle on YouTube, however I'm also aware of the risks in doing so as anyone viewing the videos would be able to steal the concepts shown before any formal patent is filed. Ideally I'd like to release most of my work under some sort of open source license that allows non-commercial and educational use. My question isn't about what license would cover this, but rather: What license, if any, could I release the videos under that would immediately protect their subject/contents? I can find many licenses that protect the videos themselves, but none that cover the subjects shown in the video. I would imagine something along those lines exists, as the videos themselves would also serve as proof of original development. I've tried finding information on this myself but can't quite seem to find exactly what I'm looking for, I hope someone here may be able to help me.
No license can create patent protection for the subject of your videos. Licenses apply to the copyright that is inherently created when you create the video. Patents can only be obtained by applying for them through patent offices. Your video would act as prior art if anyone (including yourself, with some exceptions) later tries to apply for patent protection of any of the inventions shown in the video. For you, the US (and a few other countries) offers a 1 year grace period following your public disclosure, during which you are still allowed to file a patent application on the inventions without the video counting as prior art; in most other countries, the video would immediately disqualify you from protecting the subject inventions, unless you file a patent application before publishing the video.
The government's position is that material in the patent documents is generally in the public domain See Public Domain Copyright Trademark &amp; Patent Information Schedule: As part of the terms of granting the patent to the inventor, patents are published into the public domain. And slightly more specific, see Terms of Use for USPTO websites: Patents: Subject to limited exceptions reflected in 37 CFR 1.71(d) &amp; (e) and 1.84(s), the text and drawings of a patent are typically not subject to copyright restrictions. 1.71(d) allows for the patent author to specifically indicate that some of the material is protected by copyright. But that position has not actually been tested in courts However, there is no actual statute explicitly exempting material in the patent documents from copyright nor any case law holding that in the absence of a notice, the material in fact becomes public domain. See Alderucci, &quot;The surprising consequences of exempting patents from copyright protection (2016), at p. 13 and footnote 62.
Exactly the same way it works over all other content There are no special classes of copyright, there’s just copyright. What a user of a service may do with copyright materials will be spelled out in the licence. If there is no licence, then they are left with fair use/fair dealing.
The terms transfer IP rights only for the New IP, meaning that Customer would own the new stuff. Developer will still own their old stuff, but Customer will have the right to use the old stuff, depending on the license terms. If the license is as in your link, then it is forever (but this is a stub, so I assume that the license will be more specific and possibly restrictive). You retain all your rights to old stuff, customer will not pay royalties for the old stuff, and they can transfer or extend the license, or part of the license, to others.
From your question(s), as well as your various comments, I understand you to have two general inquiries: 1. Is there any infringement of copyright laws if you use things like the titles of books, games, apps, names, address (and any other number of things) which you will then put into datasets that will be licensed for proprietary commercial purposes? You may freely put titles, names of people, places or things into datasets without fear that you are infringing on copyright or any other laws. That is clear. Copyright law does not protect names, titles, short phrases or expressions. Even if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive it cannot be protected by copyright. So, there is no point in discussing the doctrine of fair use in this context, because Fair Use is a defense, or a legal safe harbor that is merely an exception to copyright infringement allowing people to use a copyrighted works under specific circumstances. As I understand your intended endeavor, you will not be infringing on any copyrights to the extent that you are merely using factual data, like names of copyrighted things for the purpose of creating a dataset or an application to help access it. This is why I say you need not concern yourself with the test for Fair Use with regard to this issue. The Copyright Office states clearly, despite what people may think, that there are no exclusive rights in brief combinations of words such as: • Names of products or services • Names of businesses, organizations, or groups (including the names of performing groups) • Pseudonyms of individuals (including pen or stage names) • Titles of works • Catchwords, catchphrases, mottoes, slogans, or short advertising expressions • Listings of ingredients, as in recipes, labels, or formulas. When a recipe or formula is accompanied by an explanation or directions, the text directions may be copyrightable, but the recipe or formula itself remains uncopyrightable. Hence, these things are not registrable under a copyright. While something may be potentially attached to or included in copyrighted material, is not in and of itself subject to the protections of these laws. If it (whatever it is) cannot be registered for a copyright, it is not copyrightable. Because copyright registration/notices have been optional since 1989, when the U.S. attached itself to the Berne Convention, whereby copyright protection is automatic as soon as a work is “fixed in a tangible medium of expression” (written down, recorded, painted, etc.) it’s protected. No notice is required. Registration only becomes required for litigation or enforcement purposes. But this is really extraneous to your inquiry anyway, as far as it applies to the actual data. When you get into copying whole databases for your purpose, that analysis is different. 2. You want to "scrub" the internet for information that you intend to put into your proprietary datasets and use for commercial purposes, some or most of which is already in a database or some organized form, and you want to know if there is some sort of copyright or duty owned to the person who originally databased the materials? Since ideas, procedures, principles, discoveries, and devices are all specifically excluded from copyright protection, if you want to compile this type of information from the internet for the purpose of creating datasets, or searchable databases, this is permissible. That said, there are protections for existing databases under copyright law, provided under the concept of a "compilation copyright". A compilation copyright protects the collection and creative assembling of data or other materials. Compilation copyrights protect the collection and assembling of data or other materials, such that databases are generally protected by copyright law as compilations. Under the Copyright Act, a compilation is defined as a "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship." 17. U.S.C. § 101. The preexisting materials or data may be protected by copyright since the selections of materials and the form they take in an existing database may be original enough to be subject to a copyright. However, the data itself is merely information and is not protectable. The Copyright Act specifically states that the copyright in a compilation extends only to the compilation itself, and not to the underlying materials or data. 17 U.S.C. § 103(b). As a result, "compilation copyrights" can't be used to place protection upon those things that are otherwise not protectable. In the case of Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a compilation work such as a database must contain a minimum level of creativity in order to be protectable under the Copyright Act. Feist makes clear that even a copyright protected database does not hold the right to prevent an individual from extracting factual data from the database (so long as you're not copying the entire database as a whole). If you take an already compiled and copyrighted dataset in its entirety, you must obtain a license for its use. However, if you are merely amassing great amounts of data to then put into your own dataset, that you are free to do. The big issue will be (and you seem to realize this) where you will amass this data from. Some websites have specific licenses in place that say you cannot use or rework their content. However, many times these websites simply throw these license requirements out there for users to see, despite the fact that they may not be (and some would argue) are not enforceable. The courts have heard arguments that "contracts" (the end-user licenses) that protect databases and information on websites is beyond the protection available through copyright law should be "preempted" by the Copyright Act itself. The preemption argument goes like this: Federal law controlling something that is subject to interstate commerce or use, should be controlled by the federal laws. So,since the federal government has enacted the Copyright Act to govern any protections to any original works, states should be (arguably are) prohibited from having contradictory laws. Because of the ability of a federal statute to preempt state law, and the fact that the Copyright Act at 17 U.S.C. § 301 sets forth specific preemptions, no state may create rights that are equivalent to any of the exclusive rights provided under the Act. It is this concept of preemption that prevents copyright protection from varying depending upon the state where a work of authorship is created. Arguably, the same is true for the internet, and supposed contractual relationship created through licenses that dictates how non-copyrightable material may be used. In the case of ProCD, Incorporated v. Matthew Zeidenberg and Silken Mountain Web Services, Inc. the court examined whether an end-user of a CD ROM phone database was subject to the license, when they extracted a large portion of the database and made it available over the Internet. The database was almost the same as the type of data in the Feist case-The lower court rejected all copyright claims and found that the shrinkwrap license that controlled the end user's right to use the data was both unenforceable (as a shrink wrap license) and preempted by the Copyright Act. As a result, there was no relief available to the creator of the phone database and the end-user was free to extract the data and use it as he saw fit. However, on appeal this decision was reversed (7th circuit). The appellate court did acknowledge that the database (on the CD) was not original enough to be protected by copyright (finding no copyright infringement by the end-user); However, they did find the end-user was breach of contract, since the shrink-wrap license prohibited the end-user's conduct. What this tells us is that these licenses (on websites) may or may not be enforceable. While the 7th Circuit found a contract right pursuant to the license, despite the preemption argument, another appellate court that is more liberal may find otherwise. Also, this was a disk, not the internet, which is the "wild west" of information, largely unregulated and unlitigated as it pertains to the legality and enforceability of (some) regulations that do exist. License agreements for site use on the internet are everywhere. If you take a database from some site that has a license saying you cannot take their work and add to it, or whatever, and you do add it to other databases that are not licensed and then make your own dataset - chances are you are NOT going to be infringing on anyone's copyright. That said, you may be in breach of contract (the license) if they find out about it, and sue you (using it doesn't put you in breach; only getting sued and having a court determine you're in breach puts you in breach. It may be a distinction worth contemplation, but that is up to you). The safest, bet would be to get a license from them to rework the materials. If the material is generic enough, and will be changed enough, that you are creating your own new (copyrightable) work - I'm not sure how they would know you "scrubbed the data in contravention of their license agreement ( I have NO CLUE if there is coding or metadata attached to it such that it's identifiable in that way. I have not tech background and do not endorse taking what's not yours). But if they can and do know, they could cause problems for you. Lastly, I will just say that the internet is littered with sites that claim copyrights, or impose unenforceable licenses on material that is ripe for public use. Just because it says it's theirs does not make it so. The inverse is also true. Just because a site does not claim copyright to something, does not mean it is in the public domain. I would recommend either sticking to public domain/use sites for your scrubbing endeavors, or seeking permissions from the sites who impose licensing requirements. Short of that, I would recommend (as I already have) seeking an formal legal opinion to say that you are not imposing on anyone's copyrights (this could only be done once you showed an attorney every place you took material from, as well as what the material is), and that the licenses from sites with generalized information that may try to limit use, are unenforceable. I would do this before you invest a lot of time or money into something that is largely based on the accumulation of other peoples work product. I wish there was an answer certain, but there just isn't without seeing everything in the end.
On the face of it, transcripts are derivative work covered by copyright (even if automagically generated). You are allowed to use them if the use is fair use or if you comply with YouTube's terms of service.
Interesting that they don't give a source and also don't link to anywhere (such as Wikimedia commons). So I assume that content is google's own. So generally speaking: No, when no license is provided, that means you can't use whatever it is in a project of yours (whether commercially or not), because the &quot;default&quot;, when nothing is specified, is that no license is given. So unless you find a license that grants you a permission on google's own content, these sounds can't be used freely.
As for the subject matter (what can be protected), amplitude, frequency, harmonic pattern, duration etc. are all physical facts, and there is no protection for physical facts. The basic requirement is that the thing protected must be "creative". Once you have a creative composition (assuming it is a composition, where infringement is harder to establish), the question arises whether a particular other composition infringes, or is an independent creation deserving its own protection. Again, the law does not deal in technical acoustic properties, and "similarity" is dealt with in an essentially subjective manner. The find of fact, who is an ordinary observer, has to weight all of the evidence and decide whether there is substantial similarity (or striking similarity) which could be evidence of infringement (substantial similarity is not against the law, copyright infringement is). Both parties to the litigation will present testimony supporting their contention and refuting the others' contention. At some point, one side is likely to introduce expert testimony to the effect that there are only so many possible melodies, which if persuasive can overcome a feeling that two compositions are rather similar. The law only addresses the logic of that judgment, and not the scientific facts. For example, in the case of Testa v. Janssen, the legal premise is set doen that "proof of direct access is unnecessary where striking similarities between two works are present". HOw then do you know if there are striking similarities? To prove that similarities are striking, plaintiffs must demonstrate that "such similarities are of a kind that can only be explained by copying, rather than by coincidence, independent creation, or prior common source." Stratchborneo v. Arc Music Corp., 357 F. Supp. 1393, 1403 (S.D.N.Y.1973) citing a previous ruling on that point. Ultimately, the courts cannot not dictate a scientific procedure for making that determination.