1L Law Source

Heading: Feist Publications, Inc v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., 499 U.S. 340, 111 S.Ct. 1282 (1991)

Facts: - Rural provides telephone service to several communities in northwest Kansas.

State regulation mandates that as a condition of its monopoly franchise Rural must publish a telephone directory consisting of yellow and white pages.
A competitor company, Feist wished to publish a similar directory, except that its would include a much larger area.
When Feist asked Rural for permission to include its listings, Rural refused.
Feist went ahead and used many of the listings out of Rural’s directory without their consent.
Rural then sued for copyright violation.

Procedure: none mentioned

Issue: Did the unauthorized reproduction of names and phone numbers from the Rural Telephone Listing into the Feist Listing copy anything that was "original" to Rural resulting in copyright infringement?

Rule: Work that can be copyrighted must be original, meaning it must have a degree of creativity.

Holding: Facts, whether alone or as part of a compilation, are not original and therefore may not be copyrighted.

Rationale: In order for a work to be worthy of a copyright it must be original and posses a degree of creativity. Facts are never original and in this case the selection, coordination, and arrangement were not sufficiently original to trigger copyright protection. Although the facts were arranged by Rural, they were not arranged in such a manner that was original. Alphabetizing is the most common way of listing names and phone numbers in a directory.

Policy/Notes: