You might want to read the Wikipedia article you referred us all to before you post it.
The US does not recognize the "Sweat of the Brow" doctrine of copyright law.
Here's a direct quote from your Wikipedia reference:
United States[edit]
See also: Copyright law in the United States
The United States rejected this doctrine in the 1991 United States Supreme Court case Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service;[4] until then it had been upheld in a number of US copyright cases.[5][6]
Under the Feist ruling in the US, mere collections of facts are considered unoriginal and thus not protected by copyright, no matter how much work went into collating them. The arrangement and presentation of a collection may be original, but not if it is "simple and obvious" such as a list in alphabetical or chronological order.
TCDB may be entitled to some intellectual property law protection - mostly in the form of its stylings, how information is presented, etc. The backend magic of TCDB (its coding and database function) may be protected, too. Copyright protection in the US is not very deep - as long as someone can show some originality in how they present their information or work of art, it is not a copyright violation. Our country has decided a little bit of creativity is enough. And unfortunately, you never really know if your creation is protected unless a court decides in your favor.
Trademark protection is a little more rigorous (Think branding, likeness, etc. The TCDB logo is an example of something which can be trademarked.). Patent protection is very high, but the standards for obtaining a patent are much higher, too. Maybe TCDB's matching system is patentable - maybe not.
And for anyone who scanned a card for submittal to TCDB, you have no intellectual property claim to the image you created. Scanning an image for purposes of demonstrating what something looks like is not something you can copyright or claim any other kind of intellectual property protection. TCDB may be able to claim its inventory of images submitted by users was entitled to some protection, but it may be more related to how TCDB finds and displays those images. If someone else creates a different way to find and present an image, it may not be a copyright violation.
For the individuals who claimed another site stole images they submitted to TCDB, you had no property that was stolen. It might have been unethical for BSC or some other site to use images from TCDB submittals, but seriously, if you think you owned that image, you need to recalibrate your understanding of the law. If BSC used the same naming and numbering conventions that TCDB used, and TCDB created those conventions, then that may have crossed the line. We'll never know, because there was no determination by a court that a copyright was violated. If TCDB flexed and BSC backed down or removed images all that indicates is that BSC didn't want to spend money on litigation or risk the outcome of litigation.
When it comes to copyright protection, there are very few bright lines - it's mostly gray.
I understand the emotional backlash against BSC. If they took images from TCDB, it feels wrong. As for me, I got over that hurt once I saw how well-designed and user friendly BSC was. And they made things better for sellers. It could be a really good resource for collectors if you gave it a chance. I wish TCDB and BSC could be friends. I think BSC is much better than SportLots.
Feel free to criticize me for my opinions. It's one of the endearing traits of TCDB forums.
Bounty13 wrote:
Sweat of the brow - Wikipedia
I'm sure a capable lawyer could run with it. Beckett sued COMC over it, COMC backed down.
PAHSports wrote:
Without reading all 10 pages of this forum I guess my rhetorical question would be:
How does a site who gets their entire database from its users claim to own anything? How does one “own” an image of a 1992 Topps baseball card?