Canada Post Drops Ridiculous Copyright Lawsuit Over Crowdsourced Postal Code

from the only-took-four-years dept

Just over four years ago, Canada Post filed a copyright infringement suit against GeoCoder.ca, which describes itself as follows:

Geocoder.ca is a public web service providing both free and commercial geocoding services for North America: Canada and the USA. Geocoding is the process of computing the latitude and longitude of a location.

That may not sound like an obvious target for copyright infringement, since latitude and longitude are clearly just facts. But since 2004, GeoCoder has been carrying out an interesting exercise in crowdsourcing:

When you make a query to geocoder containing for example this information "1435 Prince of Wales, Ottawa, ON K2C 1N5", we then extract the postal code "K2C 1N5" and insert it into the database that you may download for free on this website.

That freely-available Canadian Postal Code Geocoded Database became so useful that NGOs and others started using it for serious purposes, much to the chagrin of Canada Post, which provided the "official" database of postal codes and was really rather keen to license it to you for a hefty sum. As Michael Geist wrote back in 2012, the case raised a number of important questions:

Key issues include whether there is any copyright in postal codes (GeoCoder argues that postal codes are facts that are not subject to copyright, noting to conclude otherwise would result in “copyright infringement on a massive, near-universal scale”), questions on whether Canada Post owns copyright in the database if there is copyright (Canada Post relies on a section in the Canada Post Corporation Act that does not appear to exist), and a denial that the crowdsourced version of the database -- independently created by GeoCoder -- infringes the copyright of the Canada Post database.

Fortunately, a more recent post from Geist explains that Canada Post has finally dropped its lawsuit. According to the GeoCoder page on the litigation, the terms are confidential, but the agreed statement is as follows:

Canada Post commenced court proceedings in 2012 against Geolytica Inc. for copyright infringement in relation to Geolytica Inc.'s Canadian Postal Code Geocoded Dataset and related services offered on its website at geocoder.ca. The parties have now settled their dispute and Canada Post will discontinue the court proceedings. The postal codes returned by various geocoder interface APIs and downloadable on geocoder.ca, are estimated via a crowdsourcing process. They are not licensed by geocoder.ca from Canada Post, the entity responsible for assigning postal codes to street addresses. Geolytica continues to offer its products and services, using the postal code data it has collected via a crowdsourcing process which it created.

As Geist notes on his blog:

The settlement represents a big win for open data in Canada, as the lawsuit raised serious concerns about over-broad copyright claims given suggestions that Canada Post owned the copyright in all postal codes.

It's just a pity that it took four years for Canada Post to arrive at this commonsense decision.

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Filed Under: canada, copyright, postal codes
Companies: canada post, geocoder.ca

Canada Post Claims Copyright Over Postal Codes, Meets Resistance

from the it's-precedent-setting-time dept

A few years ago, we wrote about the UK's Royal Mail using a dubious copyright claim to bully a website into shutting down because it offered postal code data. In that case, the company chose not to fight the claim—and yet not long afterwards, UK officials decided to free up postal code data. Now, Michael Geist reports that a similar conflict is brewing in Canada—except this time, the company is fighting back:

Canada Post has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Geolytica, which operates GeoCoder.ca, a website that provides several geocoding services including free access to a crowdsourced compiled database of Canadian postal codes. Canada Post argues that it is the exclusive copyright holder of all Canadian postal codes and claims that GeoCoder appropriated the database and made unauthorized reproductions.

GeoCoder, which is being represented by CIPPIC, filed its statement of defence yesterday (I am on the CIPPIC Advisory Board but have not been involved in the case other than providing a referral to CIPPIC when contacted by GeoCoder's founder). The defence explains how GeoCoder managed to compile a postal code database by using crowdsource techniques without any reliance on Canada Post's database. The site created street address look-up service in 2004 with users often including a postal code within their query. The site retained the postal code information and gradually developed its own database with the postal codes (a system not unlike many marketers that similarly develop databases by compiling this information).

GeoCoder is putting forth a huge array of defenses. They point out that postal codes, as facts, should not be copyrightable, that Canada Post's copyright claim over the database itself is questionable, that even if such copyright exists their crowdsourced database is not infringing, that free postal code data is in the public interest, and that Canada Post's complaint represents anti-competitive copyright misuse. As such, this will prove to be a test case for a bunch of legal questions that have yet to be fully answered by Canadian courts.

Ultimately, attempting to control postal codes makes no sense. Making it harder for people to utilize them and build services around them just decimates their purpose, and speeds their path to irrelevance in a world with lots of much better and more accessible location data—not to mention a world where physical locations and permanent addresses matter less and less for many purposes. It also seems entirely unfair: since postal codes are required for all sorts of things, including most interactions with the government, how can Canada Post (a state-owned corporation) restrict access to them? All these arguments and more are likely to be raised, and could attract some interesting interveners to the case. This will definitely be a trial to watch.

Filed Under: canada, crowdsourcing, databases, michael geist, postal codes
Companies: canada post

After Forcing Down Some Sites For Revealing Postal Codes, UK Decides To Open The Data Up

from the that-was-quick dept

It really was just a couple months ago that the Royal Mail in the UK was using a copyright claim to stop websites from offering public postal code data. It made no sense that such data should be proprietary, and it appears that, finally, UK officials are realizing this. Starting next year, the UK will free up postal code data so that anyone can use it. There are still some questions as to how this will be done, but it's a huge step forward from shutting sites down to actually freeing up the data.

Filed Under: copyright, crown copyright, openness, postal codes, uk