[tei-council] IPR inherent in TEI markup

[Gabriel Bodard]

Not silly at all; sadly a very real concern in this day and age.

A further question, which we may want to speak to a lawyer about before 
making any such addition to the license as James suggestions: Would such 
a disclaimer, that we do not claim IPR in a text based on it being 
marked up in TEI, leave the way open for *someone else* to make such a 
claim of IPR, would could later be used against someone using TEI tags? 
I know this sounds far-fetched, but again there are unscrupulous 
bastards out there, and I'd want to be very sure we're not giving too 
much away with such a disclaimer.

G

On 2011-07-15 11:40, James Cummings wrote:
>
> I recently had a discussion with one of our licensing and IPR
> experts (who will be discussing digital copyright at our Summer
> School) who had some questions about TEI licensing because of an
> issue being looked at by our legal services.
>
> Far apart from the interesting discussion on whether adding TEI
> markup to a text is considered significantly interpretative to
> count as developing IPR, he had a question about whether use of
> the TEI in specific had any vested rights adhering to the
> Consortium.  i.e. if someone uses the TEI to mark something up
> does the TEI Consortium have rights in the document based on the
> fact that we have designed the structures that are in use.
> Clearly given a) that we describe the TEI as a
> recommendation/standard and b) that we license the Guideline as
> GNU GPLv2 would indicate that we don't want to express any such
> claim.
>
> Although I think the TEI-C claiming IPR in any TEI marked up text
> is ludicrous, commercial companies have certainly attempt similar
> claims in the past (viz MS). I'd propose that on our current page
> about licensing we simply include a statement to the effect that:
> "The TEI Consortium will not express any claim of IPR in a text
> solely because it is marked up in TEI."  or similar.
>
> Silly I know,
>
> -James
>

-- 
Dr Gabriel BODARD
(Research Associate in Digital Epigraphy)

Department of Digital Humanities
King's College London
26-29 Drury Lane
London WC2B 5RL

Email: gabriel.bodard at kcl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 1388
Fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2980

http://www.digitalclassicist.org/
http://www.currentepigraphy.org/