Copyright issues - creating a Excel scoring program of a questionnaire?

[perola.rike]

Maybe this forum not the appropriate place to post this (?), but I have not found any other websites raising the issue.

My question is about to which extent does the copyright of questionnaires extend to a simple unofficial Excel scoring calculator?

The thing is, I work as a neuropsychologist where I daily score questionnaires from patients. In order to automatize my work, I have created many timesaving Excel scoring solutions of many questionnaires. The questionnaires are copyrighted.

My question is: If I make a simple scoring calculator in Excel, is it OK to distribute it to other users/colleagues?

One example is the MoCA test, it contains 12 items that are simply summed to a total score. My Excel application only permits the user to enter the raw score for each item, then a total score is displayed. See example below (in Norwegian).

The owner of the test claims this calculator is violation of copyright. I have not reproduced the test/items, only inluded the names of the items, and made this simple sum-formula.

Any comments on this? Or any tips where to find any literature regarding this specific topic?

If copyright extends this far, I assume that automatization of any questionnaires are prohibited, which realy is devastating because it is so time cosuming making such calculators (that for many questionnaires are not available).



MoCA (test-items to the left)

Trail making	0
Kopiering av kube	0
Klokketegning	0
Benevning (dyr)	3
Tallhukommelse	2
Banking	1
Regning (seriell substraksjon)	3
Gjentakelse av setninger	2
Ordflyt	1
Abstraksjon	2
Utsatt gjenkalling (ordliste)	0
Orienteringsspørsmål	6
MoCA totalscore	21

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[dmt32]

Probably not the correct site to ask such a question

I am not a legal expert and this is just a personal thought but my understanding when working in the software development industry is that Copyright is granted to the creator of an original creative work and will have exclusive legal right to determine whether and under what conditions this original work may be copied and used by others. The exclusive rights are not absolute but limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law. A major limitation on copyright ideas is that copyright protects only the original expression of ideas, and not the underlying ideas themselves. So you cannot I would have thought, copyright a questionnaire as every application using a questionnaire would be in breach & who is to say who the original author is? What would be copyright are original logos, company or application names being used on the questionnaire and any code contained in the application. If you are taking names or images from another application that belongs to a third party to use in your own application, then you may well be in breach of their copyright & most certainly will be if you have manged to accessed & copied the code. You would need to seek professional guidance to clarify but to avoid such problems, start by removing any use of names / images / references that you know belong to a third party, give your application is own unique name & ensure that you personally, have developed all the code.

As said, this is just my personal thoughts and should not be taken as absolute & could all very well be completely wrong - only expert guidance can determine if what you are doing does indeed breach another's copyright.

 

[perola.rike]

Thank you for answering, very good advice. As you mention, I should seek legal guidance from expert in the field to be sure not to violate copyright. Strangely enough, I havent managed to find similiar cases on the web, perhaps reflecting that such cases (making scoring applications of copyright protected questionnaires) have not been taken to court. This is why i posted it here in an Excel forum, but thank you for good advices!