Copyright on Russian-German Dictionary?

Question

Hi, there!

I wanna make a vocab trainer for foreign languages and make a little revenue with ads.

Therefore I'd need to obtain the vocabs/translations from online dictionaries (thru website scraping) and save them in my own database. On some dictionary-sites there are copyright-statements stated.

I would of course state the sources for the vocabs.

Questions:

1. Could arise any copyright problems (because of commercial usage), though I only use translations of words (which probably nobody holds copyright on), not definitions.

2. Would it make any difference if I'd take the words from a printed dictionary (which states "All rights reserved"?

Thx, Johnny!

Answer 1

I'll answer your second question first.  No copyright notice is necessary for a work to be protected under copyright.  That is, a work is not in the public domain simply because a phrase like "All Rights Reserved" is present.  Similarly, just because a phrase like "All Rights Reserved" is present in a work does not mean the work is necessarily protected under copyright.

With regards to your first question, the translation of a single word, in and of itself, is likely not copyright infringement.  However, the more information you utilize from copyrighted works, the greater the risk that you are misappropriating copyrightable aspects.  Thus, the more you take from the Russian-German dictionary, the more likely you are infringing on their copyright.

That being said, these kinds of questions are difficult, if not impossible, to answer in the abstract simply because copyright infringement is a very fact specific determination. My answer should only be taken in the most general sense based on my limited understanding of your facts. Even small changes in facts can entirely change the outcome.