PDFUS21 | | Is RAW data copyrightable | Respondent Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., is a certified public utility providing telephone service to several communities in Kansas. Pursuant to state regulation, Rural publishes a typical telephone directory, consisting of white pages and yellow pages. It obtains data for the directory from subscribers, who must provide their names and addresses to obtain telephone service. Petitioner Feist Publications, Inc., is a publishing company that specializes in area-wide telephone directories covering a much larger geographic range than directories such as Rural's. When Rural refused to license its white pages listings to Feist for a directory covering 11 different telephone service areas, Feist extracted the listings it needed from Rural's directory without Rural's consent. Although Feist altered many of Rural's listings, several were identical to listings in Rural's white pages. The District Court granted summary judgment to Rural in its copyright infringement suit, holding that telephone directories are copyrightable. The Court of Appeals affirmed. SCOTUS Held: Rural's white pages are not entitled to copyright, and therefore Feist's use of them does not constitute infringement | RAW Data is not copyrightable | Article I, § 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution mandates originality as a prerequisite for copyright protection | The Copyright Act of 1976 and its predecessor, the Copyright Act of 1909, leave no doubt that originality is the touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works | Rural's white pages do not meet the constitutional or statutory requirements for copyright protection | The raw data are uncopyrightable facts, and the way in which Rural selected, coordinated, and arranged those facts is not original in any way. Rural's selection of listings—subscribers' names, towns, and telephone numbers—could not be more obvious and lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression | Moreover, there is nothing remotely creative about arranging names alphabetically in a white pages directory |

SA - The Copyright Act of 1976 & 1909
RT - Originality
BT - Legal Rights
NT - Authorship
UF - The protection of original works.
SN - Legal court case. (This entry does not reference a hierarchical list)