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I don't know the laws in other countries, but where I live there is a database-law that explicitly gives the owner of a database rights. For example: you cannot

• carussell 16y ago
  Where I live (the United States), there is case law that found that where neither the individual pieces of data nor the selection criterion contain or are products of originality (read, "require editorial control" in the selection criterion aspect), the owner of a database has no such rights. For example: you can simply copy the phonebook and put it on the Web. It doesn't matter if you hire typists who type it all in manually after you've told them "Copy this." or if you use OCR technology. The phonebook example was exactly the subject of Supreme Court case Feist v. Rural. It seems like the only way Snap-on could win this one is if they demonstrate that their selection criterion met the standards for originality, which, though incredibly low, don't permit "Mitsubishi parts" to pass for originality. Edit: This deals only with the copyright aspect of the suit. This doesn't cover the trespass and trade secrets aspects, which O'Neill might be found guilty of if there were terms and conditions they violated. But I don't know—I don't know much about business/contract law.