I don't like one race taking the course of another race, but let's be honest:
We are beyond the days when races were club events run by a team of volunteers. Now they are commercial enterprises run by race management companies. All the subcontractors, from marketing to timing get paid.
As such people should have a contract. Much like software, you can do work for hire, in which case the rights belong to the person who hired you, or you can sell a service, when the rights to the work commissioned may or may not be retained depending on your contact.
What you create is copyrighted, BUT to be a USATF certified course it must be publicly published.
You got paid for creating a race map, for someones event. End of transaction.
A race expects to be able to use that same course year after year, and republish course map in their offerings, without paying you an annual licensing fee. That to me looks like work for hire, they own the ongoing use.
Now if they want to change the course a bit one year they might be wise to return to the orignal measure, but it seems to me that they are quite within their right to use someone else, and to have their map of their race updated.
When a car company commissions an advertisement the result is normally their property. While the artists, trades and craftsmen who were hired to create the content take pride in their work, the copyright of the resulting work is owned by the auto company that commissioned the work. The craftsmen and artists who worked on the advertisement don't retain copyright, and don't run off to the competitor to say, we already got that done, let me put your logo and name on it.
In this regard, measure get a free pass, because it is not uncommon for someone to ask for a course you have already done, or ask for a race in the same park. Do you recreate the park map from scratch, making sure not to infringe on the copyright of the prior map or any other map of the park? - Or do you just say, I got that park map already done, let me just add the marked points and race name?
Should we be encouraging the reuse of courses by a number of events? After all, if the city has a police plan, and the park has worked through the details, it saves everyone time and money.
What happens if a second race runs the same course? This is common in cities with lots of races and few good racing venues. Do a bunch of different measures go out and lay down lots of overlapping courses. That's the last thing the running community needs.
I am in the sub-tropics. Races start before or soon after dawn, so we have to find marks in the dark, and don't need a bunch of conflicting markings.
There is a park near me with an obvious location favored by the park for your tents, an obvious start line, and about ten mile 1 pins and painted marks, at one mile down the course. None in agreement, and that is just the first mile.
I encourage people to look at the website and pick an existing course if it works. It saves them the cost of measurement, and prevents overlapping/overlayed courses.
To that end any course I have measured is named after the location, and sometimes direction. (Birch Park 5K, Anticlockwise). That means any event can reuse the course and course map.
However if ones a good bit of ones income comes from measuring courses one might be inclined to suggest every race have it's own certified course, and name them after the event name. Even if that results in a number of same, or similar courses on top of each other. Personally I think that is bad form.
Measures get a wide latitude to reuse the same course, and basic course map, for the next event that comes to town. Maybe because even if you can copyright the map the actual course is now in the public domain.
Can you reuse part of a map for that park that was commissioned and paid for by someone else? Who is violating copyright then?
As to copyright: If you have not registered your work with the copyright office your damages are a maximum of the copiers profit. Profit calculated after cost.
AND you have to pay to register your work before you can bring an action in federal court, AND you would have to prove you did not sell the rights to the race, AND you pay your own lawyers fees.
So unless you are going to register each work with the copyright office, you are really not going to get a nickle, so there is no point in taking umbrage.
Moreover there are a number of things you can't copyright: Fashion, Dance, Ideas, Methods, or Systems, for a start. You an copyright a map, but maybe not the facts in the distances.
When a map displays the fact that a road runs North South, that fact can't be copyrighted either.
You probably don't want to go to court arguing that a basic cert sketchmap contains significant unique "originality" and is not just a rearrangement of basic elements, and not derived from the cartography borrowed from somewhere else.
While you can copywright a map there is much that goes into making a map, like proper surveying.
Legally, in most cases, it is not a "map" without a north point, a scale, and and a reasonable attempt to mark objects position according to the scale and repetitive bearings.
Did you really go measure the compass baring of that street to determine it ran NE/SW or did you appropriate that information from google maps?
What we do are, in most cases, equivalent to engendering sketches, over which it is difficult assert originality, and to sue. Similar to architectural drawings of basic objects.
Should a derivative course map give the orignal draftsman credit? On that I agree.
We should encourage measures who do derivative courses and drawings to contact the orignal draftsman and measure if known, and at least ask permission: Which, in our sport, which requires sportsmanship on and off the course, should be freely given. Both credit and permission should be given when appropriate.
We should:
(A) Stop naming courses after the event, and name for the location and distance.
(B) Encourage new events to just re-use the existing courses.
(C) Remember we are doing works for hire. (Just like the people who time the races.)
(D) Understand that the race who hired us to do a job. They can continue to use that course for the next ten years, every weekend in the year if they want, and they don't owe us another nickle.
(E) The course is pubic. Anyone else who wants to run that distance can, on their own one windy night or as part of an organized event.
(F) Acknowledge we are technicians, not artists. We are paid for exact measurements. These are engineering sketches/drawings, not really orignal art, no matter how proud we are of them.
Acknowledge the real genius is not in measurement. That is purely procedural.
The genius is in designing a course. Making the perfect course that really works for the start and finish, is fun to run, easy to manage or divert the traffic, is safe, cost effective and has all the elements from nearby parking to bathrooms. That's where the art is.
If anyone should get credit for "creative work", it is the course designer.
