If I were another professor of German Poetry of this period and had separately researched my own list of the most important 1,000 poems I would, presumably, come up with many entries in common with Prof Knoop's. Since I'm a rival academic, though, there would also be some I'd argue should be in his list and others that are worthless and should never have been included.

Would I not be able to use the ones I agree about in my own database (and the anthology I'm thinking of publishing), because they already exist on the Freiburg list? How many of them could I use before I was said to be infringing?

This seems to me to be a dangerous ruling, limiting research and surpressing difference of opinion, which is an important part of the academic method.