Do I own my grandfather’s genealogy information?

In our new reality of sharing and cooperation I was thinking – always a dangerous thing to do! – about who owns genealogical data. We invest a lot of time and effort in finding the genealogical information on our ancestors. Surely after all our work it should be ours?
This leads one into the very complex world of copyright law. In a recent article I was reading there was a link to an interesting article on copyright and genealogy. Here is the link: http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/genealogy_copyright_fundamentals.htm
Several points I noticed in the article:
1. Facts like birthdates and places are not copyright because they are not original expression.
2. “A pedigree, descendant chart, GEDCOM, or any other standard genealogy form or format that contains nothing but facts is not copyright protected.” (Goad, Micheal P “Copyright Fundamentals for Genealogy,” link above)
3. If you create a family history book then that can be copyrighted.
4. American copyright law is not the same as Canadian law although there are lots of things in common. For the basics of Canadian Copyright law go to Canadian Intellectual Property office web site (you will have to do a google search for this as I can’t find a stable link that lasts!) or read the following article: http://users.trytel.com/~pbkerr/copyright.html The Media Awareness Network also has a summary of Canadian copyright law and the next to last paragraph refers to the Internet. http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/legislation/canadian_law/federal/copyright_act/cdn_copyright_ov.cfm
(if clicking on the links doesn’t then try copying and pasting the link into your browser)
So I guess we don’t own the dates and facts related to our ancestors?

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