Intellectual Property Rights

Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.

499 U.S. 340 (1991)

Facts

Rural Telephone Service was a local telephone company required to publish a directory containing subscribers’ names, towns and telephone numbers.
It arranged the white-page listings alphabetically.
Feist Publications produced a wider regional telephone directory.
Feist requested permission to use Rural’s listings, but Rural refused.
Feist nevertheless obtained factual information from Rural’s directory and included many of the entries in its own publication.
Rural had inserted several fictitious listings to detect copying.
Some of those false entries appeared in Feist’s directory, proving that Feist had copied information from Rural.
Rural sued for copyright infringement.
The lower courts applied the “sweat of the brow” approach, reasoning that Rural deserved protection because it had invested labour in collecting the information.
Feist appealed to the United States Supreme Court.

Whether facts such as names, addresses and telephone numbers are copyrightable.
Whether a factual compilation receives copyright protection merely because substantial effort was used to collect it.
Whether Rural’s alphabetical arrangement possessed the originality required for copyright.

Facts are discovered rather than created and cannot be owned through copyright.
A compilation may nevertheless be protected if its:
selection;
coordination; or
arrangement is original.
Originality requires:
independent creation by the author; and
at least a minimal degree of creativity.
Originality does not require novelty or artistic excellence.
Labour, expense and industrious collection alone are insufficient.
Copyright in a compilation is “thin” and extends only to the original manner in which facts are selected or arranged.
Others remain free to use the underlying facts.

Rural could not claim copyright in subscriber names, towns or telephone numbers.
Those facts existed independently of the directory.
The constitutional purpose of copyright is to encourage original expression, not to reward effort alone.
Rural’s white pages included virtually every subscriber because it was legally required to do so.
Therefore, the selection involved no meaningful creative judgment.
The entries were arranged alphabetically by surname.
Alphabetical ordering was obvious, conventional and practically inevitable for a telephone directory.
It lacked even the small creative element required for originality.
The Court expressly rejected the “sweat of the brow” doctrine.
Rural’s labour in collecting and verifying the information did not transform facts into copyrighted expression.
The fictitious entries proved copying, but copying alone is not enough.
Copyright infringement requires copying of something that copyright protects.
Feist copied unprotected factual material rather than an original selection or arrangement.
Rural remained free to protect its information through other lawful means where available, but copyright could not be used to create a monopoly over facts.
The Court emphasised that this result was not an accidental weakness of copyright law.
Public access to facts is an essential part of the copyright system because later authors must remain free to use factual knowledge.

The Supreme Court unanimously held that Rural’s white-page directory lacked the required originality.
The names, towns and numbers were uncopyrightable facts.
The comprehensive selection and alphabetical arrangement were entirely conventional.
Feist therefore did not infringe copyright by copying the listings.
The “sweat of the brow” doctrine was rejected.
Use this case for: a factual compilation is protected only when its selection or arrangement contains a minimal degree of creativity; effort alone is insufficient.