The document discusses metadata ownership and rights, exploring when metadata can be viewed as intellectual property and the implications of copyright in relation to metadata. It includes various case studies, such as that of Duke University Press and Open Bibliographic Data initiatives, highlighting issues of attribution, copyrightability, and the benefits and drawbacks of open metadata. Overall, it emphasizes the necessity of understanding legal rights surrounding metadata to promote innovation and effective use in scholarly communications.

1. Metadata Ownership
& Metadata Rights
Introduction by Jane Greenberg
Tim Elfenbein, Will Midgeley, Emily Roscoe, Chelcie Rowell, & Jessica Wood
UNC Scholarly Communications Working Group
13 February 2013

2. Overview ➡ Will Midgley
(presented by Jane Greenberg)
Copyright 101 ➡ Emily Roscoe
Metadata & Policy ➡ Jessica Wood
(presented by Chelcie Rowell)
Case Study: Duke University Press ➡ Tim Elfenbein
Case Study: Open Bibliographic Data ➡ Chelcie Rowell

3. Overview ➡ Jane Greenberg

4. Introduction
Can (or when) may metadata be considered a
commodity, product, or intellectual creation?
Who owns metadata? What are the rights
issues that surround metadata? How, why, or
when, might rights issues apply?

5. What is metadata?
Author, number of pages, etc. or something
larger?

6. What is copyrightable expression?
• Google PageRank?
• Netflix "suggestions for you" algorithm?
• WorldCat record?
• Flickr tags?

7. Metadata as Intellectual Property
• Intellectual property made possible through
legal rights for creators of intellectual
products: copyrights, patents, trademarks,
trade secrets, etc.
Purpose: “to promote the Progress of Science and
useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors
and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
Writings and Discoveries”
• Can’t own facts, however

8. Is Metadata Copyrightable?
• In Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone
Service, Supreme Court rejected “sweat of
the brow” doctrine
 Result: collections of facts are not copyrightable;
intellectual product must contain modicum of
creativity for protection
 Copyright section of U.S. Code also states that
“compilations” can be sufficiently original to secure
copyright

9. Who Owns Metadata?
• Producers of metadata are often taxpayer-
funded (e.g. Library of Congress, individual
libraries uploading their records to OCLC's
WorldCat, informatics staff at government
agencies and lab)
• Can metadata be “owned”? Is it more like a
fact about the world, or a creative
expression?

10. When Might Rights Issues Apply to
Metadata?
SkyRiver v. OCLC
• SkyRiver is a for-profit company providing
bibliographic services.
• Sued OCLC for overcharging libraries who
switched to SkyRiver for cataloging
• SkyRiver’s catalog is made up of LoC
records (public domain), British Library,
member libraries, etc.
• Suit mostly about pricing, but SkyRiver wants
access to OCLC database

11. When Might Rights Issues Apply to
Metadata?
OCLC v. Library Hotel
• Library Hotel (www.libraryhotel.com) used
Dewey Decimal Classification theme
• DDC owned (trademarked and partially
copyrighted) by OCLC
• OCLC sued over trademark infringement
• Issue here was more over metadata’s
“brand” than the actual scheme itself

12. Drawbacks of Open Metadata
• "Loss of potential attribution" and "loss of
potential income" (Oomen and Baltussen)
 OCLC v. Library Hotel an example of first
 SkyRiver v. OCLC an example of second

13. Benefits of Open Metadata
• Driving users to your content
• Stimulating collaboration
• Enabling new scholarship that can only be
done with open data
• Allowing creation of new services for
discovery
• "increas[ing] relevance to digital society"
(Oomen and Baltussen)

14. Copyright 101 ➡ Emily Roscoe

15. Provided Protections
• Title 17, United States Code (U.S.C.)
• Protects authors of “original works of
authorship” (published and unpublished) to
do and authorize others to do the following:
 Reproduce
 Distribute copies
 Perform (audio works)
 Display (visual works)
 Prepare derivative works

16. Limitations on Author Rights
Exemptions for copyright liability
• Fair Use
 The purpose and character of the use
 The nature of the copyrighted work
 The amount and substantiality of the portion used in
relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
 The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or
value of, the copyrighted work
• Compulsory License

17. Copyright Points to Remember
• Copyright secured automatically, though
registration provides added protection
• Works consisting entirely of information that is
common property and containing no original
authorship are NOT protected by copyright
• Copyright protection expires

18. Who is Author?
In the case of works made for hire, the
employer and not the employee is considered
to be the author. Section 101 of the copyright
law defines a “work made for hire” as:
• a work prepared by an employee within the scope
of his or her employment; or
• a work specially ordered or commissioned for use

19. Case Law: Claims of Meta[data]
Rights Violations
Trademark violation claims in meta tags (HTML)
• PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES INC v. WELLES (279
F3d 796 (2002))
 "Nominative use"
Copyright violation claims in page number use
• Matthew Bender & Co Inc v. West Publishing
Co (158 F. 3d 674 (1998))

20. Metadata & Policy ➡ Chelcie Rowell

21. Survey of Metadata Reuse Policies
• University of Pittsburgh institutional repository
• University of Edinburgh institutional repository
• University of Surrey institutional repository
• National Estuarine Research Reserve System
• IMLS Digital Collections & Content project

22. Common Features of Metadata
Reuse Policies
Access:
• Anyone has right to access metadata
Re-use:
• Non-profit users have unrestricted permission
• For-profit users must request permission
In both cases of re-use, metadata creator must receive an
attribution.

23. OCLC's "Community Norms"
• Based on Open Data Commons Attribution License
• Established through collective process among OCLC
member institutions
• Adopted by Harvard Library and others
• Includes recommended language for contracts with
outside IT vendors
Policy rationale regarding use of WorldCat bibliographic data:
"to encourage the widespread use of WorldCat bibliographic data while
also supporting the ongoing and long-term viability and utility of WorldCat
and of WorldCat-based services"

24. OCLC Community Norms: Acceptable Uses
of WorldCat Metadata
• Incorporating into local library catalogs
• Supporting patron research, facilitating resource discovery
• Verifying bibliographic data on local holdings
• Granting access to non-OCLC members for personal,
scientific, or institutional research/re-use
• Transferring WorldCat data on local holdings to outside
vendors providing services to the one's local institution
These norms were established by the OCLC Cooperative, last
updated on June 2, 2010.

25. OCLC Community Norms: Discouraged
Uses of WorldCat Metadata
• unauthorized distribution of OCLC log-ins, passwords
• mass downloads of WorldCat records w/o prior
permission from OCLC
• mass distribution of data directly from WorldCat to non-
members w/o prior permission from OCLC
Significant violations of the Community Norms, if reported, will
be sent to the Global Council and the OCLC Board of
Trustees for arbitration.
(OCLC 2012-2013
Board of Trustees)

26. Case Study: Duke University Press ➡ Tim Elfenbein

27. Duke University Press
Non-Profit Scholarly Publisher
Medium-sized university press digitizing its book and
journal backlist, as well as producing new digital content
Wishes to integrate journal and book content on a common
platform, and improve findability and searchability
Huge influx of newly digitized content with little metadata

28. Taxonomy Strategies
Commercial Metadata Services
Joseph Busch: Ex-President of ASIS, Ex-Board Member of
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Services: Taxonomy construction, workshops, training, and
project definition (taxonomy governance)
Proposal: Review of DUP content, stakeholder interviews,
identify priority content metadata and controlled
vocabulary, develop and test content taxonomy,
establish governance guidelines, provide training
Cost: Mid-five figures

29. TEMIS
Semantic Content Enrichment Platform
Metadata extraction, semantic annotation, classification
and clustering, facet and filter builder, etc. Uses existing or
creates new/enhanced domain taxonomies.

30. DUP’s Options for Metadata Development
Create and maintain our own taxonomy
• Pros – Best fit for content, possible competitive edge
• Cons – Expensive and time-consuming,
not interoperable, only first step
Opt-in to semantic tagging initiative with other publishers
hosted by HighWire
• Pros – Access to larger corpus for taxonomy
development, interoperable metadata formats,
off-loading labor
• Cons – Expensive, loss of DUP focus and control,
could get squished by the needs of bigger players

31. Case Study: Open Bibliographic Data ➡ Chelcie Rowell

32. Open Knowledge Foundation:
Principles of Open Bibliographic Data
Explicit and robust license statement
Recognized waiver or license
Defined by the Open Definition
Explicitly placed in the Public Domain via ODC-
PDDL or CC0

33. JISC Open Bibliographic Data Guide
One of the possibilities that open bibliographic data
offers is the chance for libraries and indeed anyone to
reuse the data to build innovative services for
researchers, teachers, students and librarians.
—Andy McGregor, JISC Programme Manager

34. JISC Open Bibliographic Data Guide:
Building Business Cases
WHY? Core rationale is about discoverability
and gaining in credibility the more our
resources are discovered from ‘out there’
(through such as Google) and not from ‘in here’
(through the local OPAC).
HOW? Cost effectively and while maintaining
control at the point of release of data.

35. JISC Open Bibliographic Data Guide:
Pathways to Added Value

36. JISC Open Bibliographic Data Guide:
Pathways to added value

37. Richard Wallis Reflects on OCLC's
Release of WorldCat as Linked Data
1. Hundreds of millions of items
2. Used Schema.org vocabulary
3. Human-readable and machine-readable
(RDFa) on WorldCat.org
4. OCLC cooperating with other communities to
extend Schema.org for libraries
5. Open Data Commons license (ODC-BY)
6. First step in an ongoing process!

38. WorldCat Record for Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows

39. Summary of ODC-BY License Terms

40. Harvard Bibliographic Data Set
"The accessibility of the entire set of data for
each item will, we hope, spur imaginative uses
that will find new value in what libraries know."
Mary Lee Kennedy
Senior Associate Provost for the Harvard Library

41. Within hours of release, one user
developed his own search interface

42. Another user shared a parser for
MARC21 data on GitHub

43. Still another user documented his
efforts to "massage" the data

44. Harvard Bibliographic Data Exposed
via Digital Public Library of America

45. Open Bibliographic Data in Balance
Benefits Drawbacks
 in line with mission to  no going back – once
disseminate knowledge data is released difficult
& enable innovation to withdraw or re-
 publicity & status for first release with more
movers stringent terms
 creates opportunities for  open-ended
third parties to develop commitment of time &
services that may drive resources
traffic back to library and
library holdings

46. Questions?

47. References
Bueno, Carlos. A parser for the Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset.
https://github.com/aristus/copymine-harvard#readme.
DPLA API query for items contributed by
Harvard.http://api.dp.la/v0.03/item/?filter=dpla.contributor:harvard_edu.
Eaton, Alf. Working With the Harvard Library Bibliographic Data Set. HubLog.
http://hublog.hubmed.org/archives/001953.html.
Gray, Jonathan. Europeana opens up data on 20 million cultural items. Guardian
DataBlog. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/12/
europeana-cultural-heritage-library-europe.
Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset. http://openmetadata.lib.harvard.edu/bibdata.
IMLS Digital Collections and Content Project. Metadata Reuse Policy.
http://imlsdcc.grainger.illinois.edu/MetadataReuse.
JISC Open Bibliographic Data Guide. http://obd.jisc.ac.uk/.
National Estuarine Research Reserve System Centralized Data Management Office.
NOAA Ocean and Coastal Resource Management Policy for the NERRS National
Monitoring Program. http://cdmo.baruch.sc.edu/data/policy.cfm.

48. References
Open Bibliographic Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Principles on
Open Bibliographic Data. http://openbiblio.net/principles/.
Open Data Commons Attribution License. http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/.
Record Use Policy Council. WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC
Cooperative. http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/recorduse/policy/default.htm.
Schwartz, Meredith. Harvard releases metadata into public domain. The Digital Shift.
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2012/04/metadata/harvard-releases-metadata-into-
public-domain/.
Shieber, Stuart. The new Harvard Library open metadata policy. The Occasional
Pamphlet on Scholarly Communication.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/04/27/the-new-harvard-library-open-
metadata-policy/.
University of Edinburgh. DataShare data policy for full-text and other full data items and
metadata policy for information describing items in the repository.
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/services/research-
support/data-library/data-repository/service-policies/data-metadata-policy.

49. References
University of Pittsburgh. D-Scholarsip@Pitt metadata policy for information describing
items in the repository. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/policies.html.
University of Surrey. Surrey Research Insight (SRI) Open Access metadata policy for
information describing items in the repository and access and reuse policy for full-text
and other full data items. http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/policies.html.
Wallis, Richard. OCLC WorldCat Linked Data Release – Significant in Many Ways.
Data Liberate. http://dataliberate.com/2012/06/oclc-worldcat-linked-data-release
-significant-in-many-ways/.
"What Does One Do With Millions of MARC records?" http://gavialib.com/2012/05/what-
does-one-do-with-millions-of-marc-records/.
WorldCat Record for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/155131850.