[Lexicog] Using old dictionaries

[Piotr Bański]

Hello Ron and All,

Ronald Moe writes:
> You cannot copyright the words of a language. So you can use the headwords
> from a copyrighted dictionary. But you should fix spelling errors, add new
> words, omit archaic words, etc. Otherwise the copyright owner of the old
> dictionary might very well complain on moral principles if not legal ones.
> 
> You can copyright definitions, example sentences, and other descriptions. If
> the older dictionary is still in print, you cannot use the descriptions
> without permission.

You cannot copyright words, but surely, you can copyright a particular
selection of headwords, as a collection of data that you yourself
created and that reflects your particular approach to the description of
the language at hand. This goes for old, hand-assembled dictionaries as
well as for new ones, especially if they are based on your corpus that
you composed yourself, together with the lexical-word/token-frequency
cut-off point that you assumed, and with your decision of what other
headwords to include beside those that have made it above the frequency
threshold.

In other words, taking over someone's set of headwords alone (in order
to e.g. provide translations in a language different from the original
L2) surely does count as copyright infringement, does it not? Even if
you fix spelling errors and possibly remove a subset of headwords (e.g.
swearwords, proper names, etc.).

Hmm, it's hard to believe that something like that hasn't happened yet
-- perhaps some such precedents have already been recorded (?)

Best regards,

  Piotr


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