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The parent cites a case (Feist v. Rural) where a judge ruled otherwise. Feist copied fictitious entries from Rural, but it was not considered copyright infring

• Someone 16y ago
  Yes, I overlooked that, but I do not think that argumentation is applicable to this case. The Wikipedia page about that case states: "O'Connor states that copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself." and "the standard for creativity is extremely low" For a map, the creative aspects are way stronger than for a phone directory. Therefore, I still think that copying significant parts of a map would be infringement. Trap doors would help strengthen the case that copying took place.
  • jcl 16y ago
    I trust you've also seen the Wikipedia article cited elsewhere in these comments, where copying fictitious map entries was also ruled non-infringing? A map is ostensibly a presentation of facts, and while there are creative decisions involved that can be copyrighted, trap streets are not among these decisions. In the U.S., at least, it's not enough to establish that copying took place, if facts are the only things being copied. And that's a good thing. If intentional factual errors were copyrightable, newspapers would fill their articles with misspellings and falsehoods in hopes that they could sue competing publications out of existence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street#Legal_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street#Legal_issues