Question for Bob Lemke

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Posted By: jay behrens 

Do you happen to have the Standard Catalog available in spreadsheet or database form? It would save me a lot time finsihing out my player database.

Jay

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Posted By: Bob Lemke

the data base on which the Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards and all the other Krause price guides are based is not currently available in any format other than ink on paper. Management has a strong bias against making this proprietary intellectual property which has cost literally millions of dollars to develop over the past 20 years too easy to steal. There is also the very pragmatic concern that having been jerry-rigged on all manners of hardware platforms and software programs over the decades, the data could not be effectively made available for licensing.

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Posted By: julie

some johnny-come-lately (where'd i pick that up?) who has stolen not only your good checklists, but your mistakes as well.

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Posted By: Bob Lemke

Courts have repeatedly ruled that you can't copyright data, only the form of its presentation. So picking up checklists is fair game for the lazy or under-resourced.

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Posted By: Paul

I've always thought that checklists could be copied legally. Which has made me wonder ... when the Beckett guide happens to have a checklist that the Standard Catalog is missing (some of the team issue photos, for example), why don't you just copy it? Are you waiting for independent verification from a source other than Beckett? Or do you just believe that it would be wrong to copy, so you won't do it. I hope this question isn't taken the wrong way. I'm just curious. Thanks.

Paul

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Posted By: Bob Lemke

I have great respect for Rich, Grant and Wayne and for the work they've done for Jim on the Almanac. However, because I can't be sure of where they got their checklist for a particular set, I don't want to risk compounding any errors which may creep into the body of their work. (It is virtually a full-time job to find and correct my own listing errors.) Also, there is the matter of hobby morality. If our competition takes the time and makes the effort to acquire a good ol' vintage set listing, I don't feel it is right to pick it up from their pages. That's not to say that on occasion one of our contributors hasn't provided us with a checklist lifted in that manner, but both the Almanac and the Standard Catalog share a fair number of contributors.

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Posted By: julie

until after I had to sell most of my collection--by either not listing 19th century cards, or hiding them away in the most ridiculous places!

Sorry, I couldn't resist that!

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Posted By: MW

<< However, because I can't be sure of where they got their checklist for a particular set, I don't want to risk compounding any errors which may creep into the body of their work. >>

Bob,

Is the mystery #135 card from the 1936 World Wide Gum Set one of those "errors" that you have refused to compound in the Standard Catalog over the last twelve years? (see selection from the 2003 Standard Catalog below)

Also, will you be following the 1936 World Wide baseball Beckett Checklist for the 2004 Standard Catalog or is the card pictured below indeed unverifiable?

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I'd love to own a Weintraub; he's not got any other cards I'm aware of.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

<<Courts have repeatedly ruled that you can't copyright data, only the form of its presentation>>

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Posted By: julie

And I told him, he needs to talk to a LAWYER> I think maybe we all do. I know a bunch of yez are lawyers: so sound off!

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Posted By: Bob Lemke

I don't spend any time scouring the Almanac for "missing" cards. This is the first time I've ever seen or heard of a Weintraub in '36 WWG. I'll add it to the data base, though it might not be in time for the 2004 book. Other than a 1937 4-on-1 Exhibit, this appears to be his only career-contemporary card. I don't have case law citations for the matter, but believe the major decision was a case which the "Yellow Pages" lost more than a decade ago.

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Posted By: Paul

The Copyright Act (17 USC Section 102(b)) states that "facts" cannot be copyrighted. The leading case on the subject is the Supreme Court's decision in Feist (sorry, I don't have the full name or cite handy). The Supreme Court held that a phone book's white pages are not protectable by the copyright laws. The white pages are a list of every single phone number and therefore just a list of "facts" that cannot be copyrighted. There are many other cases holding that complete lists of facts cannot be protected by copyright. I think Bob is right that a complete list of baseball cards in a particular set also cannot be copyrighted.

Strangely, the copyright laws do protect INCOMPLETE lists. If SCD published a checklist of its "100 Favorite" baseball card sets, no other publisher could copy that exact listing of 100 sets. The idea is that some level of creativity went into picking those 100 sets, and that kind of creativity is protected by the copyright laws. But when you try to compile a complete list (like the Standard Catalog's attempt to list every set), the Supreme Court says that no creativity is involved, just hard work, and hard work is not protected by the copyright laws.

There have been several attempts in recent years to amend the copyright laws to protect large collections of data. So far, Congress has decided not to pass any of these laws.

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Posted By: julie

Now I know that if someone wants to use "My 41 Favorite Movies in No Particular Order," I can sue the pants off him, but the SCD Calalogue's repeated use of the names of Colgan's Chips (E254)that don't exist is
fair game for anybody.

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Posted By: jay berhens

I need that card for my player set. Don't make me have to Indian Leg Wrestle you for it :-p

Jay

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Posted By: Paul

Crazy but true. Actually, a list of fictional cards that don't really exist might be copyrightable because of the creativity involved.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I learn something new every day practicing law, which is why I like it (that plus the money).

Regards,


Adam