[Freegis-list] Redistribution Rights

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 12:03:41PM +0200, Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 10:54:32PM -0400, steve whitehead wrote:
> > Can anyone clearly explain what this means?  Does this mean ESRI 
> > owns any Tiger 2000 files in shapefile format?
> > 
> > Redistribution Rights: Other than ESRI's intellectual property rights 
> > in the shapefile format, ESRI claims no ownership or proprietary 
> > rights in the TIGER/Line® 2000 data itself.
> > -download disclaimer
> 
> no, that certainly impossible. The Shapefile format is published
> in a whitepaper by ESRI and can be used by anyone for any purpose.
> 
> To be honest, I am not sure about the intention of the above
> statement by ESRI talking about IPR on the Shapefile format itself.
> It looks quite senseless in this context.

There is a small chance that ESRI has patents or trademarks 
around the shapefile format. The former is very hard to investigate.
Both would be interesting to know, though.

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