Feist Publications Inc v Rural Tele. Servs. Co. Brief Fact Summary.

A publishing company used information from a telephone directory to publish its own directory. Synopsis of Rule of Law. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author, which means that the work was independently created by the author, and it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. A work may be original even thought it closely resembles other works so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying. Facts. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. (Plaintiff) provides telephone service to several communities. Due to a state regulation, it must issue an annual telephone directory, so it published a directory consisting of white and yellow pages. The yellow pages have advertisements that generate revenue. Feist Publications, Inc. (Defendant) is a publishing company whose directory covers a larger range than a typical directory. Defendant distributes their telephone books free of charge, and they also generate revenue through the advertising in the yellow pages. Plaintiff refused to give a license to Defendant for the phone numbers in the area, so Defendant used them without Plaintiffs consent. Rural sued for copyright infringement. Issue. Are the names, addresses, and phone numbers in a telephone directory able to be copyrighted? Held. No. Facts cannot be copyrighted, however compilations of facts can generally be copyrighted. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author, which means that the work was independently created by the author, and it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. A work may be original even thought it closely resembles other works so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying. Facts are not original. The first person to find and report a particular fact has not created the fact; he has merely discovered its existence. Facts may not be copyrighted and are part of the public domain available to every person. Factual compilations may possess the requisite originality. The author chooses what facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected date so they may be effectively used by readers. Thus, even a directory that contains no written expression that could be protected, only facts, meets the constitutional minimum for copyright protection if it features an original selection or arrangement. But, even though the format is original, the facts themselves do not become original through association. The copyright on a factual compilation is limited to formatting. The copyright does not extend to the facts themselves. To establish copyright infringement, two elements must be proven: ownership of a valid copyright and copying of constituent elements of the work that are original. The first element is met in this case because the directory contains some forward text. As to the second element, the information contains facts, which cannot be copyrighted. They existed before being reported and would

have continued to exist if a telephone directory had never been published. There is no originality in the formatting, so there is no copyrightable expression. Thus, there is no copyright infringement. Discussion. Facts cannot be subject to copyright laws; otherwise there would be no spreading of information or learning. Subjecting facts to copyright laws would mean that any time a person used a fact found in a book, be it in a school paper, newspaper, or another book, that person would be guilty of piracy. Columbia Pictures Entertainment vs Court of Appeals Intellectual Property Law on Copyright Requirements Before a Search Warrant May Be Issued in Copyright Cases Piracy In 1986, the Video Regulatory Board (VRB) applied for a warrant against Jose Jinco (Jingco), owner of Showtime Enterprises for allegedly pirating movies produced and owned by Columbia Pictures and other motion picture companies. Jingco filed a motion to quash the search warrant but the same was denied in 1987. Subsequently, Jinco filed an Urgent Motion to Lift the Search Warrant and Return the Articles Seized. In 1989, the RTC judge granted the motion. The judge ruled that based on the ruling in the 1988 case of 20th Century Fox Film Corporation vs CA, before a search warrant could be issued in copyright cases, the master copy of the films alleged to be pirated must be attached in the application for warrant. ISSUE: Whether or not the 20th Century Fox ruling may be applied retroactively in this case. HELD: No. In 1986, obviously the 1988 case of 20th Century Fox was not yet promulgated. The lower court could not possibly have expected more evidence from the VRB and Columbia Pictures in their application for a search warrant other than what the law and jurisprudence, then existing and judicially accepted, required with respect to the finding of probable cause. The Supreme Court also revisited and clarified the ruling in the 20th Century Fox Case. It is evidently incorrect to suggest, as the ruling in 20th Century Fox may appear to do, that in copyright infringement cases, the presentation of master tapes of the copyright films is always necessary to meet the requirement of probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant. It is true that such master tapes are object evidence, with the merit that in this class of evidence the ascertainment of the controverted fact is made through demonstration involving the direct use of the senses of the presiding magistrate. Such auxiliary procedure, however, does not rule out the use of testimonial or documentary evidence, depositions, admissions or other classes of evidence tending to prove the factum probandum, especially where the production in court of object evidence would result in delay, inconvenience or expenses out of proportion to is evidentiary value.

In fine, the supposed pronouncement in said case regarding the necessity for the presentation of the master tapes of the copy-righted films for the validity of search warrants should at most be understood to merely serve as a guidepost in determining the existence of probable cause in copy-right infringement cases where there is doubt as to the true nexus between the master tape and the pirated copies. An objective and careful reading of the decision in said case could lead to no other conclusion than that said directive was hardly intended to be a sweeping and inflexible requirement in all or similar copyright infringement cases.