question about copyright and code, is this legal?

[Patrik Stridvall]

> > Protecting trivially collectable collections of fact would serve
> > no purpose that I can see...
> 
> Here, if the collection as a whole requires trivial effort to 
> collect, it's 
> not protected. It's the aggregate effort that counts. The 
> problem with the MS 
> tables is that from what has been said the aggregate has 
> involved a lot of 
> effort over many years.

Perhaps.

However:
1. The data in question is of a more scientific in nature than the facts
   about the world that law is presumably ment to protect so it might
   not apply at all.
2. Since Microsoft have intentionally published it in the US where no
   such protection exists, it could be argued that it have exhausted its
   right to protection because of this. After all everybody could import
   it itself from the US if they wanted. In the case of Wine and other
   open source software this is especially true because of the Internet.