What data can I scrape out of online resources about plants without worrying about copyright infringement?

Is a digital creation of an existing copyright protected textbook (not word-to-word but in a concise point form, kind of like study notes that one makes) a copyright infringement?

• I am trying to develop a study tool that will be based on an existing textbook in terms of structure and content (which is purely factual) and  will also have references to many additional resources to make the learning and understanding easier and more fun. There will be a fee to use this tool. I don't plan to literally copy/paste anything from the book but retype important points in a concise form. So it may have the same structure and organization of content. Will this be seen as an infringement of copyright. The book is published in US and the study tool will also be for people in US. Thanks in advance for your input on this!

• Answer:

  It would probably be a copyright infringement. The proposed study tool would be a derivative work. The owner of copyright on the underlying work also owns derivative works. In order to avoid infringing the copyright, your document must contain a substantial amount of original, creative content, enough to make it copyrightable on its own, minus the non-creative portion copied. The key question is whether "retype important points in a concise form" means rewriting or condensing. The leading case ishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural. See also the Wikipedia article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work. There is a concept of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformativeness under the Fair Use Doctrine that might apply, but it requires value to be added by presenting the quoted material "in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original." In this case, both are for the purpose of student learning. Whether the manner would be sufficiently different seems doubtful to me. An attorney specializing in intellectual property might disagree.