## Facts

- Assessment Technologies of WI, LLC (AT) licensed Wisconsin municipalities a proprietary property-tax assessment software system that stored assessment information in an electronic database with a copyrighted structure and code.
- The municipalities, not AT, created and collected the underlying assessment data (e.g., property address, owner, assessed value, physical characteristics) for tax administration.
- WIREdata, Inc. sought electronic copies of these municipal assessment data for use by real-estate professionals and requested the data from municipalities under Wisconsin’s open-records law.
- AT opposed disclosure in electronic form, asserting that extracting the data from AT’s system would infringe AT’s copyright in the software and database compilation (and also asserted trade-secret claims).
- The district court issued a permanent injunction against WIREdata based solely on AT’s copyright theory, without reaching the trade-secret claim.
- WIREdata appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether raw municipal property assessment facts stored in AT’s system are protected by AT’s copyright in the software and database compilation.
2. Whether a copyright owner may use rights in software/compilation to prevent licensee municipalities from disclosing public-domain data contained in the system.
3. Whether extracting and providing the data (by running reports, exporting, or using intermediary tools) constitutes infringing copying of protected expression rather than permissible access to unprotected facts.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit reversed the permanent injunction.
- The court held that copying and disclosing the raw municipal assessment data does not infringe AT’s copyright, regardless of how the data are extracted, so long as only unprotected factual data are obtained.
- The court held AT could not use copyright in the compilation or software to prevent its municipal licensees from disclosing public-domain data.
- The court did not decide the trade-secret claim on the merits; it noted the claim appeared weak given the public availability of the database structure in a freely distributed demo.

## Legal Principles

- Facts and other wholly unoriginal data are not copyrightable; copyright protection does not extend to raw data merely because they reside within copyrighted software or a copyrighted compilation.
- A compilation copyright protects only original selection, coordination, or arrangement, not the underlying facts; it does not authorize blocking others from obtaining or disseminating public-domain data.
- Licensed use of copyrighted software as a tool to access and export uncopyrightable data is not infringement absent copying of protected expression beyond what the license and copyright law permit.
- Copyright cannot be used to convert public records into private control by “secreting” public-domain information inside a proprietary system.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit held that municipal assessment facts stored in proprietary assessment software remain unprotected public-domain data, and AT’s copyright in its software and database compilation could not be used to stop municipalities from providing those data to WIREdata in electronic form.


Assessment Techs. of WI, LLC v. WIREdata, Inc., 350 F.3d 640 (7th Cir. 2003)