On Mon, 26 Jan 2009, Russ Phillips wrote:
I have a question. I like the efforts made to collect postcode data by NPE and Free the Postcode, and have contributed data to all three projects. However, I don't understand why collecting postcode data through sites like NPE and Free the Postcode is not infringing Royal Mail's copyright.
Our understanding is that you can't copyright a single postcode. You can, however, claim a similar bit of IP rights (database rights) over a collection of postcodes
If you extract a bunch of postcodes + lat + long combinations from codepoint, or even if lots of people each extract one set, then you're infringing on the RM database rights on the collection. If you were to extract out a long list of postcodes, but not lat + long, from one of the RM databases, then again you're infringing on DB rights.
However, taking one postcode (with no other data), and work out its position yourself, there is no extraction from the RM database, so no infringement.
Nick