Last week users of the popular online Singapore street directory, streedirectory.com realised that the service was no longer available. This could be the outcome from the loss of the hight court appeal by the company that owns streetdirectory.com, Virtual Map. On 25th March 2008, the High Court dismissed Virtual Map’s appeal with costs. ( Can access the case from Lawnet in our Library database Page ).

SGHC 42
This was an interesting case against Virtual map , who the judge decided had infringed the copyright of , Singapore Land Authority (“SLA”), with respect to SLA’s street directory data in vector format.
There were a few interesting things to raise about this case.

Firstly : A few years back Virtual Map were busy sueing companies for infringing the Copyright law, by copying parts of the online map to their websites. I still remember this because my previous company was also sued for making use of the online map section to facilitate the customers in locating the business location. Many of the companies agreed for off-the court settlement, and a few others went to court.

Secondly : It was interesting that there were many ‘fingerprints’ on VM online map that prove the copying of SLA data. As an example, Phantom or ghost details and errors

“19 The first group of “fingerprints” concerns phantom or ghost details, which are non-existent objects deliberately inserted by SLA in its maps in order to flush out copycats. Many of such “deliberate” errors in SLA’s maps are reproduced in VM’s online maps.”

Thirdly : The unavailabity of the streetdirectory.com, created an opportunity to other similar online map providers eg Shownearby.

You can read the following news from Factiva.com . For NTU users, access from our Library database page via Factiva

Streetdirectory.com will stay alive
TODAY (Singapore), 7 April 2008, 482 words, Jinny Koh and Sheralyn Tayjinny@mediacorp.com.sg, (English)
They have it all mapped out. At a meeting on Saturday after it lost its case in the High Court, shareholders of Virtual Map (VM) decided to continue running its website. They also decided not to refund the parties VM had fined for …
(Document TDAYSG0020080406e4470001e)

Street map website down after lawsuit loss
Straits Times, 4 April 2008, 317 words, Chua Hian Hou, (English)
Company which lost copyright case and appeal aims to be back online in 2 days A POPULAR website that features interactive street maps of Singapore has been taken offline after its parent company, Virtual Map, lost a court battle against a … (Document STIMES0020080403e44400010)

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