In reply to Swampi:
> Genuine question. Would the name, grade and stars of a route be the intellectual property of the SMC? Or would that technically belong to the first ascensionists? Route descriptions would be the IP of the SMC, if they came from the guidebook authors I guess?
No-one has ever really answered that question. There were attempts to address it back in 2001 but there was no definitive ruling.
What did come out of that debate is that climbing is better served by an open, informal and less restrictive approach to route data ownership and guidebooks in this country have become much better for that.
This is certainly our approach at UKC/Rockfax. Whilst we put a © on our route descriptions in UKC Logbook, we make no claim to any route name, star rating, FA information, or even the general description (except perhaps the actual wording). Even so most of the copyright concerns we have are mass database copying rather than someone reproducing a route description they got from one of our authors. In fact, we actively encourage other guidebook writers to use the fantastic resource that UKC Logbook has become in order to improve their own information.
Alan