Case Study: Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.

“As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity. Copyright aims to protect original expressions and promote progress, not just the labour involved in creating a compilation of unoriginal data.”

Citation: 499 U.S. 340 (1991)

Date of Judgment: 27^th March,1991

Court: Supreme Court of the United States  

Bench: William Rehnquist. (CJ), Byron White (J), Thurgood Marshall (J), Harry Blackmun (J), John P. Stevens (J), Sandra Day O’Connor (J), Antonin Scalia (J), Anthony Kennedy (J), David Souter (J)

Facts

• Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. (Rural) is a certified public utility that provides telephone services to several communities in Kansas. As part of its legal obligation under state regulation, Rural publishes an annual telephone directory, which includes two sections:

1. White pages: A listing of names, addresses, and phone numbers of its subscribers.
2. Yellow pages: Business advertisements that generate revenue for Rural.

• Feist Publications, Inc. (Feist) is a publishing company that specializes in creating larger, area-wide telephone directories covering multiple regions. Feist’s directories include not only the basic subscriber listings but also other features for broader geographical areas. Feist distributes these directories free of charge, making money through the advertisements in the yellow pages.
• Feist wanted to expand its directory to include the area serviced by Rural. To do so, Feist requested a license from Rural to use the white pages listings from Rural’s directory. This information was essential to create a comprehensive directory for the region.
• Rural refused to grant Feist a license to use its subscriber information (white pages listings). Despite this refusal, Feist still needed the data to complete its directory covering 11 telephone service areas.
• After being denied the license, Feist proceeded to extract the necessary listings from Rural’s directory without permission. Feist made some alterations to Rural’s listings but retained several entries exactly as they appeared in Rural’s white pages. This unauthorized use formed the basis of Rural’s copyright infringement claim.
• Rural filed a lawsuit against Feist, alleging that Feist’s use of its white pages listings without consent constitutes copyright infringement. Rural claimed ownership over the arrangement of the data in its directory, arguing that Feist copied the listings directly, thus violating its copyright.

Decision of the District Court of Kansas

The District Court ruled in favour of Rural, holding that the telephone directory, including its white pages listings, was subject to copyright protection. It found Feist guilty of copyright infringement for using the data without permission.

Decision of the Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit

The Court of Appeals upheld the District Court’s ruling, affirming that Rural’s telephone directory was copyrightable and that Feist’s actions amounted to copyright infringement. The Court stated that since Rural Co. had put in substantial effort in making their directory, they would be considered as the copyright owners of the contents of the Directory.

Decision of the U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Supreme Court held that Rural’s white pages were not protected by copyright because they lacked the required originality.

The Court determined that copyright protection extends only to works that display a minimum level of creativity. A mere alphabetical listing of names, towns, and telephone numbers does not meet this standard. The Court rejected the “sweat of the brow” doctrine, which previously extended copyright protection based on the effort put into compiling facts, ruling instead that copyright does not cover facts themselves or compilations that lack original selection, coordination, or arrangement. The decision emphasized that copyright aims to protect original expressions and promote progress, not just the labour involved in creating a compilation of unoriginal data. Consequently, Feist’s use of Rural’s directory listings did not constitute copyright infringement, and the Court reversed the judgment of the lower courts.

Key legal issues discussed

1. Can the names, addresses, and phone numbers in a telephone directory be copyrighted?

No

The names, addresses, and phone numbers in a telephone directory cannot be copyrighted.

The court reasoned that facts themselves, such as names, addresses, and phone numbers, are not eligible for copyright protection because they are discovered, not created. Copyright protection extends only to the expression of ideas, not to the facts themselves. “As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity.”  Although compilations of facts may be copyrighted if they possess originality in their selection, coordination, or arrangement, the specific details in this case names, addresses, and phone numbers lacked the requisite originality. The directory’s alphabetical listing did not involve any original selection or arrangement beyond the mere compilation of facts, which does not meet the minimum standard for copyright protection. Sections 101 and 103[1] permit copyright protection for compilations to the extent of their creative arrangement, the court found that Rural’s directory did not satisfy this criterion.

The Court held that “Rural cannot claim originality in its coordination and arrangement of facts. The white pages do nothing more than list Rural’s subscribers in alphabetical order. This arrangement may, technically speaking, owe its origin to Rural; no one disputes that Rural undertook the task of alphabetizing the names itself. But there is nothing remotely creative about arranging names alphabetically in a white pages directory. It is an age-old practice, firmly rooted in tradition and so commonplace that it has come to be expected as a matter of course. It is not only unoriginal, but it is practically inevitable too. This time-honoured tradition does not possess the minimal creative spark required by the Copyright Act and the Constitution.”

The United States Supreme Court held that sine qua non of copyright is originality. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author. Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. The requisite level of creativity is extremely low, even a slight amount will suffice. It further held that the primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labour of authors, but to promote the progress of science and useful arts. To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work.

In this case the court rejected the doctrine of the “Sweat of the brow” as this doctrine had numerous flaws, the most glaring being that it extended copyright protection in a compilation beyond selection and arrangement of the compiler’s original contributions to the facts themselves. A subsequent compiler was not entitled to take one word of information previously published, but rather had to independently work out the matter for himself, so as to arrive at the same result from the same common sources of information. The “Sweat of Brow” further flouted the basic copyright principle that no one may copyright facts or ideas and it creates a monopoly in public domain materials without the necessary justification of protecting and encouraging the creation of writings by authors.

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[1] The Copyright Act, 1976, ss. 101, 103.