copyright licensing
Are the assignments of tags to Stack Exchange questions licenseable?
<p>Most questions on Stack Exchange have been assigned one or several tags by Stack Exchange users. Are these assignments of tags to Stack Exchange questions licenseable?</p>
<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vmK7s.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/vmK7s.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>

<p><a href="/questions/tagged/united-states" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;united-states&#39;" rel="tag">united-states</a></p>
<p>Under US copyright law, I do not think this is copyrightable.  See the US Copyright Office's <a href="https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Compendium of the U.S. Copyright Office Practices</em>, Third Edition, Chapter 300</a>, Section 313.4(B).  The Supreme Court held in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/499/340/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Feist v. Rural Telephone</em> (499 US 340, 1991)</a> that &quot;copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess
more than a <em>de minimis</em> quantum of creativity&quot;.</p>
<p>The <em>Compendium</em> gives some examples of works that do not meet this standard, some of which seem analogous to a set of tags on an existing post:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li><p>A Venn diagram consisting of three overlapping circles containing
the names of various personality disorders and a few words and
short phrases that describe the symptoms of each condition.</p>
</li>
<li><p>A synopsis [of a work of the performing arts] consisting of a single sentence.</p>
</li>
<li><p>A public domain photograph of Winston Churchill combined with the
word “Commitment” and the quotation “Never, never, never give up.”</p>
</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Since the tagging is not subject to copyright, the concept of licensing makes no sense: anyone is free to copy such a &quot;work&quot; regardless of whether or not the &quot;author&quot; has granted them a license, and doing so would not bind them to any conditions imposed in any such license.</p>
