I think there are several hurdles that need to be overcome.
First off, I don't think this is or can be a copyright issue. The purpose of a copyright is not to protect the information, but rather to protect the intellectual property of its creator, and at least with respect to the USA, is founded in the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;,” and more fully outlined in specific copyright laws. As stated in the first paragraph, the proposal is targeted to cover factual information, such as courtroom decisions and professional directories. This type of information may already be in the public domain (such as courtroom decisions) and therefore are not copyrightable, and in other cases is not the result of discovery and/or invention, and therefore is not within the scope and intention of copyright protection.
The next hurdle deals with the actual ownership of the data? Who actually owns these facts? If it’s public data, then it’s open to the public. That fact that my names appears in a professional directory is a fact, but no one owns that fact, any more than someone owns the fact that 2+2=4 (at least in bases >=4). If you don’t own it, are not its creator or discoverer, then you cannot copyright it. What you can copyright however, is how and the format in which that data is presented.
MDXer does bring up some good points about the time and money that people and organizations have spent to collect, organization, verify, and publish information. When you buy an encyclopedia, you are not buying the facts, you are buying the compilation, organization, and presentation of that data, and the copyright applies to the compilation, organization and presentation of the data, but not the content. The content is public domain knowledge. If the content were the issue, then you wouldn’t have so many different brands of encyclopedias. What companies can then protect are the processes they use to manage the data, or the search engines, their report formats or other presentation methods, and perhaps some data, such as calculated values based on some proprietary formula. And they can sell usage of those products.
However, as far as going to mw.com and making your own dictionary, why can’t you? What ownership or protectionary right does mw.com, or any of the other myriad of on-line dictionaries, have over the words and their definitions. After all, how many dictionaries already exist? You want to do one more, go for it.
The focus should not be on how to protect the data, but how companies can protect their processes.
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
