Searchable databases for Art and Entertainment
As discussed, the "independent creation" defense in copyright relies
heavily on the supposed difficulty (as compared to the patent world) of
searching for existing art and entertainment products. What follows
are links to sites on the Internet, books and CDROMs that allow
searching of tremendous amounts of "prior art" or "scenes-a-faire".
Images
Music
Movies
Television
Texts
Designs
Search Tools
IMAGES
- Google's indexing of 390,000,000 images
- The New York Times archive of 7,000,000 historical photographs. Also for sale at the Times' online store or photo agency.
- Smithsonian Institution's makes available online over 1800 photos from its collection of 13,000,000+ images
- National Geographic Society - as of 2003, the NGS made available for sale 10,000 images from its collection of
10,000,000 photographs
- Art Resource web site - with 3,000,000+ images
- Art Business web site - database with with 3,000,000+ price records of sales for 250,000+ artists
- Getty Museum database of information on 2,000,000 photographs of art and architecture
- Mariner's Museum has 600,000+ maritime photographs (not online)
- PHOTO.NET - database of 430,000+ photographs and images
- New York Public Library - 300,000+ images
- Bridgeman Art Library - 250,000+ images
- Library of American Broadcasting - 200,000+ images from television and radio
- 200,000+ images of food
- 100,000+ posters and 50,000+ art prints
- 150,000+ GIF animations
- Smithsonian database of 137,000 photograph negatives from 11,000 American artists
- Smithsonian database of 80,000 photographs of gardens
- 85,000 records of cartoons
- 60,000 medical images - archived by the National Library of Medicine
- 60,000 Christian art images
- 50,000 photographs of the Arabic world - Arab Image Foundation, Bierut
- World Wide Media Exchange 30,000+ images retreived by geographic location
- Children's Art Archive - images of over 30,000 works of art by children
- 29,000 images
of bacteria - from the Protist Information Server
- Internet image archive - 21,000 downloadable photos
- 15,000 high res images - royalty free
- European Artists Gallery - 11,000 digital reproductions of European paintings and sculpture from 1150 to 1800
MUSIC
Books
- Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin - lyrics to 1200 songs
MOVIES
Books
- The Anime Encyclopedia - A guide to Japanese animation since 1917 - with
information on over 2,000 anime television shows and movies
TELEVISION
Books
- Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows - info on 5500+ shows from 1946 to present
- Experimental Television, Test Films, Pilots and Trial Series - info on 3000+ shows from 1925 to 1995
TEXTS
Internet
Books
- Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - 20,000 entries
- Dictionary of American Proverbs (Oxford) - 15,000 sayings and maxims
- Oxford Dictionary of Thematic Quotations - 7,000 quotations
- Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations - 6,000 quotes and puns
- Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes - 500 nursery rhymes and songs
PRODUCT DESIGNS
SEARCH TOOLS
While raw databases of art and entertainment works are useful for prior art
searching purposes, such databases are even more useful when advanced
search techniques are used. What follows is a list of papers that provide
examples of such advanced techniques.