In an amended statement of claim, filed this week in federal court, Canada Post is expanding their original claim — that they own the copyright to postal codes — against Geolytica to include not just copyright violations but trademark violations.
Geolytica is a small Ottawa-based company that produced a crowd-sourced database of Canadian postal codes. These postal codes include the boundaries of each postal code area and makes them easily downloadable by members of the public.
Canada Post sued.
Geolytica has argued since 2011, back when the proceedings began, that postal codes cannot be copyrighted because they are facts. Just as you cannot copyright the chemical formula of water — H2O — you cannot copyright a postal code attached to an address.
Canada Post disagrees. The crown corporation now argues that the very term “postal code” is subject to a trademark owned by Canada Post. Anyone using the term “postal code,” therefore, does so at their own risk.
“Canada Post has adopted and used Canadian Official Mark POSTAL CODE,” the statement of claim reads. “The Defendants have passed off their wares and services as and for those of Canada Post contrary to section 7(c) of the Trade-marks Act.”
What this means is Canada Post is changing direction in their lawsuit against Geolytica.
Geolytica has argued since the lawsuit began that they did not copy the Canada Post postal code database, but instead built their own based on the feedback of their own users. They crowd-sourced it. This makes Canada Post’s original copyright claim trickier, even if you set aside the facts vs. intellectual property argument.
Instead, Canada Post is going after the public good argument. They say that by using the same terminology to offer similar or identical products, people will confuse the two and be misled.
Canada Post also has significant monetary interest in this lawsuit.
The company is losing money hand over fist as use of their service declines. Use of the postal code database is a significant form of income for the company, since third-party companies use it to track customers, academics use it for research and journalists use it to tell stories. Each of these people pay Canada Post a fee for use of the database. If Geolytica is allowed to produce their own database and offer it for free, that hurts Canada Post.
In a blog post responding to the updated statement of claim, Ervin Ruci, who runs the website in question, wrote about how he feels about Canada Post’s claims that the words “postal code” are now trademarked.
“I will also kindly ask the federal government to stop asking me about my postal code on tax forms, and any other communications they have with me. Due to copyright reasons I might not be able to answer that question and I also hold them responsible for bringing this situation to a head,” Ruci wrote.
The Canada Post lawsuit has also triggered a debate about how old-world industries are meant to operate in the Internet age.
“A company founded and still operating on the mentality of the pre-internet age, or even the pre-transistor age, has to understand the realities of new technologies. Starting with the simplest fact that a ‘postal code’ is not solely for the purpose of sending mail via Canadapost’ as they claim,” Ruci wrote.
Ruci also said in an email to Canada.com that several government agencies are using Geocoder.ca, including the federal Department of Justice. He said he worries that the amended statement of claim, if proven, could open the door to thousands of lawsuits from Canada Post against anyone who uses postal code data, names or symbols without express permission.
Jon Blanchard, a technology columnist with Canada.com, echoed that sentiment in an article he wrote for Frank Magazine in 2012.
In that column, he noted that copyright infringement notices issued to The Globe and Mail and PublicIntelligence.net “clearly support growing concerns regarding the use of Copyright as a means of political and bureaucratic censorship in Canada and abroad.”
As Ruci wrote, Canada Post’s difficulties in generating income are not going to disappear when they’ve claimed copyright and trademark over common terms like postal codes.
“There are opportunities for this old company to make money in this new environment and they are much better positioned than a one-man company like geocoder.ca, to do so,” he wrote.
The lawyers for Canada Post, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, declined to comment on the amended statement of claim.
Canada Post has been approached for comment and this story will be updated when they reply.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: William Wolfe-Wylie
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