Glad that you are making progress on this Jim.
The difference between Texas and California law may be germane.?ÿ The California Public Records Act states that, with certain exceptions related to privacy, proprietary or preliminary data, any information held by a public agency must be provided to a requestor in the format in which it is held and at the cost of reproduction.?ÿ The law has been tested many times, perhaps most notably in a 2013 California Supreme Court ruling that Orange County's GIS parcel database is a public record subject to disclosure under the CPRA.?ÿ That ruling obviates any claim of copyright to public map data in California.
Jim,
No, there's no substantial difference here in Texas from what you've stated above.
The map you draw of a parcel is covered by copyright law against reproduction even if it is filed as public record. Just like a book in a library is of public record however you can not make copies of it. You can view it and take notes of the factual information contained on the plat however the actual plat and the way the information is represented is intellectual property. There is existing case law that backs up the fact that maps are protected by copyright, but the information contained on the face of the map is not. The actual act of copying and/or distributing copies of maps without permission appears to be in direct violation of federal copyright law based on the case law that I could find. We just had a massive issue with a company foia requesting the surveys in our state so I did the research and found that since it is copyright protected it is exempt from those requests. I am not a lawyer however it is pretty easy to find the existing case law that makes this very clear.
The library book analogy isn't apt - a library book isn't a public record, it's a commercial product more analogous to software, which is a protected work that cannot be copied without infringing on copyright.
In my opinion, a filed map - in California, anyway - is expressly intended to be copied and distributed in order to inform the public of the status of the cadastral fabric. The creator may retain rights to certain elements of the maps (e.g. a company logo) , but even those may be reproduced under the fair use doctrine.
Given the long and widespread history of counties distributing copies of filed maps, I would think that any of action claiming copyright violation would quickly get laughed out of court.
So your survey maps are not commercial products? Just to be clear I am not talking about state law but it is a clear violation of Federal law. Your plat is intellectual property even if you don't think that you created it. The one exception may be ALTA surveys since they are, in a way, form documents. However the court cases I have found even cover GIS maps. Interestingly enough IF you do the survey for a governmental body then they have the right to distribute. It was quite an interesting research project. On publicly filed private maps any element that could be done differently based on the person doing it is considered intellectual property and can not be copied. You can however take any of the factual information off the face of the map and also reference said map. It is the actual copying of the map that is federally illegal. My personal opinion is that as long as they are stripped of all stamps etc. so that they can not be reused and are not being sold I would not have an issue with it. However as Federal copy right law is written it is still completely illegal. It would take a court setting new precedent and ignoring all old rulings to change that. Makes for a quite interesting search if you go looking for the court cases. The line work, placing of symbols, line types, fonts, north arrow, even scale are decided by the surveyor. I could not find any exceptions to the federal law that would exempt maps, survey or otherwise.
To be clear this is more of an issue with someone acquiring the records for the purpose of redistributing them, not a surveyor using them for his personal research purposes.
In other words... Never mind.
Historic boundaries and conservation efforts.
Yes, as far as I'm aware, survey maps filed at the County Clerk's office, even if copyright protected, can be reproduced under the fair use doctrine. The nominal fee the Clerk's office charges for the copy wouldn't be considered selling it for profit.
Could you imagine not being able to get a copy of a filed survey map to use for a retracement survey?
Just a guess but I will theorize that the problems you cite are a result of these government employees have forgotten that they are public servants and now see themselves unanswerable to the peasants so they tend to "lord" over us.
They need a reminder now and then that they work for us and if they give snotty remarks or display indifferent attitudes it will get them dragged out to the street and gut shot several times with a large caliber weapon.
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Too much? ???ý?ÿ
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JAS, I think that was a tad too strong.