Tweets and copyright

This Kat is a bit of a fan of the WIPO MAGAZINE. For those of you that use the social networking service Twitter and share your thoughts online via so called "tweets", the July edition of WIPO MAGAZINE has a nice short article by Consuelo Reinberg which discusses whether tweets can ever be "original" enough to be protected by copyright (see also the AmeriKat's post here and here). For those of you that do not (yet) use Twitter and wonder what this post is all about, WIPO's article also includes some explanatory notes.

There is certainly an argument to be made that a collection of tweets could - under certain circumstances - qualifiy to be protected under database rights. In this regard, the IPKat recommends Dr Carsten Ulbricht's article (only in German) which can be accessed here.

By the way, just like the IPKat, WIPO can also be followed on Twitter (link here).