Except that first, you don't have to explicitly show a copyright notice for something to be copyrighted. By default, a work is copyrighted. You can explicitly g

Except that first, you don't have to explicitly show a copyright notice for something to be copyrighted. By default, a work is copyrighted. You can explicitly give up a copyright, but not putting a notice is not that. Secondly, and I don't really know the 'state of play' of 'database copyright' across various countries but one thing is for sure: a phone book is a database of facts. Search engine results are a database of 'creativity'. The first link you see when you Google something is not 'the best result' as a fact. If it were a fact then surely Bing, for example, would know, for a fact, that that is the best result for that search. ie. they would also return the same 'fact'.