I have created routable street maps for my area. I would like to copyright this data.
Currently I'm going in circles with the Copyright office, because they say it is not a map; they're expecting an image of some sort.
I'm saying it's not a 'computer program' because it doesn't actually 'instruct' or 'do' anything; it's more like a database or lookup table.
Regardless, there are questions as to which 'category' an electronic map falls under, with respect to the US Copyright office.
Has anyone registered their maps with the Copyright office? Would you 'know' which category these kinds of maps fall under? I'm guessing the same as Google or Bing, but they (USCO) don't seem to know which categories those are in...
Cheers!
-- Smug
I don't copyright my maps, but Garmin copyrights CNNANT.
QuoteCanMap®, DMTI Spatial and the DMTI Spatial logo are trademarks of DMTI Spatial Inc., Markham, Ontario.
The Data for areas of Canada includes information taken with permission from Canadian authorities, including: © Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, © Queen's Printer for Ontario, © Canada Post Corporation, GeoBase®, ©Department of Natural Resources Canada. All rights reserved.
© 2011 NAVTEQ. All Rights Reserved.
© Garmin Ltd. or its subsidiaries 2012.
Nothing that answers your question here, but you may want to ask them.
Vector map is a database. I don't how it works in US, in Poland database rights are protected by other legislations than copyright. This doesn't exclude copyright for creative parts of the map like icons, graphical design, selection of data.