[scoopertrooper]

The mere fact that he compiled the database isn't sufficient to qualify for copyright protection. He'll have to show that he used a sufficient level of creativity to arrive at the numbers he displayed.

Based on his testimony, I suspect he'd have a reasonable case to argue, but he'd have to show that his researchers carefully weighed different sources and made other judgements for each individual celebrity rather than just running some script over public property records.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyright_in_lists#C...

[mthoms]

The article says they employed a number of researchers to come up with the numbers.

I don't think property records (or any other publicly available information) would be enough to come up with an accurate figure in an automated fashion. So, there's some educated guesses (aka "informed estimations") going on and therefore a form of "creativity" (IMHO).

[scoopertrooper]

I agree if the testimony is taken at face value, it makes a pretty reasonable case. However, there's nothing to say that the values he arrived at were accurate (not that it'd necessarily be material to the case) or that his 'researchers' were not just some content farm to write up articles around those numbers in order to enhance SEO. These are the kind of things that'd be deliberated upon in a court case.

[mthoms]

I think we agree. If the numbers required actual research they should be copyright-able.

[esrauch]

I'm not sure about that; the mass of the moon to more decimal places would surely require actual research potentially at great expense, but the resulting number shouldn't be copyrightable since the resulting number is a fact about nature.

[scoopertrooper]

If each entry was individually researched by a person that made judgements by weighing various sources of information against each other to arrive at an estimate, then yes I think they'd have a pretty strong legal argument.

[SpelingBeeChamp]

Amusingly, the reality that their net worth figures are (for the most part) made up works to their advantage here.

[SpelingBeeChamp]

Why would that be necessary? Google copied celebrities the CNW founder invented out of thin air. Not just their net worth, but their very existence.

[scoopertrooper]

Itd be hard to calculate damages for copying the net worths of imaginary people.