Copyright in compilation

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Copyright in compilation is a facet of copyright law that may provide copyright protection to a compilation (or collection) of material, irrespective of copyright in the underlying material.

Contents

In the copyright law in the United States, such copyright may exist when the materials in the compilation (or "collective work") are selected, coordinated, or arranged creatively such that a new work is produced. Copyright does not exist when content is compiled without creativity, such as in the production of a telephone directory. In the case of compilation copyright, the compiler does not receive copyright in the underlying material, but only in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of that material. [1]

In the European Union, copyright in compilation due to the creativity of selection and arrangement is one facet of the Database Directive of 1996, which also protects databases from extraction of substantial content that represents significant work by the compiler. [2]

A compilation may include any combination of public domain material or copyrighted material, owned by the compiler or others. If a compilation utilizes material under copyright by someone else, compilation protection does not grant the compiler rights to that material or permission to use it without license, and it does not give the compiler the right to prevent others from reusing the individual elements in the compilation. Rather, it exists independently of any copyright protection that may apply to the material used in the compilation itself. [3]

Confusion sometimes occurs when the copyright status of the elements is conflated with the copyright status of the compilation. For instance, copyright on a filmed musical may lapse, but public display of the film without license may remain a copyright infringement if the songs performed therein are still protected by copyright. [3]

Examples

Under the U.S. law, which protects the human creativity expressed in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the material, the copyright office gives the following examples of compilations in which copyright might exist, as each represents compilations that reflect human creativity in preparation: [1]

Feist v. Rural (1991)

A critical case to the application of copyright in compilation in U.S. law is Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. , 499 U.S. 340 (1991), in which the Supreme Court clarified the role of creativity in protection. [4] In the case appealed, Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own, after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed.

Prior to this case, some U.S. courts were following the sweat-of-the-brow doctrine, which gave copyright to anyone who invested significant amount of time and energy into their work. [5] At trial and appeal level, the courts followed this doctrine, siding with Rural. The appeal centered on two well-established principles in United States copyright law: facts are not copyrightable; compilations of facts can be copyrightable. In regard to collections of facts, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stated that copyright can apply only to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not to the information itself. "Notwithstanding a valid copyright, a subsequent compiler remains free to use the facts contained in another's publication to aid in preparing a competing work, so long as the competing work does not feature the same selection and arrangement," O'Connor wrote.

The ruling has major implications for any project that serves as a collection of knowledge. Information (that is, facts, discoveries, etc.) from any source is fair game, but cannot contain any of the "expressive" content added by the source author. That includes not only the author's own comments, but also his choice of which facts to cover, his choice of which links to make among the bits of information, his order of presentation (unless it is something obvious like an alphabetical list), any evaluations he may have made about the quality of various pieces of information, or anything else that might be considered "original creative work" of the author rather than mere facts.

The European Union Database Directive (1996)

Shortly after the Feist decision, the European Union began working to create a unified approach to copyright in compilation for databases. [2] In 1996, it released its Database Directive, which incorporated approaches that had previously been used in much of continental Europe requiring creativity in the selection and arrangement of collected material and the sweat-of-the-brow approach of areas like the United Kingdom. Under Article 3 of the Directive, databases which, "by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents, constitute the author's own intellectual creation" are protected by copyright as collections: no other criterion may be used by Member States. This may be a relaxation of the criterion for protection of collections in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which covers collections "of literary and artistic works" and requires creativity in the "selection and arrangement" of the contents. Any copyright in the database is separate from and without prejudice to the copyright in the entries.

Copyright protection is not available for databases that aim to be "complete"—that is, where the entries are selected by objective criteria: these are covered by sui generis database rights. While copyright protects the creativity of an author, database rights specifically protect the "qualitatively and/or quantitatively [a] substantial investment in either the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents": if there has not been substantial investment (which need not be financial), the database will not be protected.

Database rights are independent of any copyright in the database, and the two could, in principle, be held by different people.

Related Research Articles

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself. A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.

The World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty is an international treaty on copyright law adopted by the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1996. It provides additional protections for copyright to respond to advances in information technology since the formation of previous copyright treaties before it. The WCT and WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, are together termed WIPO "internet treaties".

A database right is a sui generis property right, comparable to but distinct from copyright, that exists to recognise the investment that is made in compiling a database, even when this does not involve the "creative" aspect that is reflected by copyright. Such rights are often referred to in the plural: database rights.

Originality is the aspect of created or invented works as being new or novel, and thus distinguishable from reproductions, clones, forgeries, or derivative works. An original work is one not received from others nor one copied from or based upon the work of others.. It is a work created with a unique style and substance. The term "originality" is often applied as a compliment to the creativity of artists, writers, and thinkers. The modern idea of originality is tied to Romanticism, by a notion that is often called romantic originality.

Copyright in the Netherlands is governed by the Dutch Copyright Law, copyright is the exclusive right of the author of a work of literature or artistic work to publish and copy such work.

Database Directive

The Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases is a directive of the European Union in the field of copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of Rome. It harmonises the treatment of databases under copyright law and the sui generis right for the creators of databases which do not qualify for copyright.

The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not. In this context, "originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author", rather than "never having occurred or existed before".

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 United Kingdom law

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, also known as the CDPA, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that received Royal Assent on 15 November 1988. It reformulates almost completely the statutory basis of copyright law in the United Kingdom, which had, until then, been governed by the Copyright Act 1956 (c. 74). It also creates an unregistered design right, and contains a number of modifications to the law of the United Kingdom on Registered Designs and patents.

Copyright law of Ireland is applicable to most typical copyright situations. Protection expires 70 years after the death of the author/creator. Irish law includes a provision for "fair dealing," similar to that used by other countries. In 2012, a copyright law was proposed that Wired compared to SOPA and suggested could pass without parliamentary vote.

Spanish copyright law governs copyright, that is the rights of authors of literary, artistic or scientific works, in Spain. It was first instituted by the Law of 10 January 1879, and, in its origins, was influenced by French copyright law and by the movement led by Victor Hugo for the international protection of literary and artistic works. As of 2006, the principal dispositions are contained in Book One of the Intellectual Property Law of 11 November 1987 as modified. A consolidated version of this law was approved by Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996 of 12 April 1996: unless otherwise stated, all references are to this law.

"Author's rights" is a term frequently used in connection with laws about intellectual property.

In copyright law, related rights are the rights of a creative work not connected with the work's actual author. It is used in opposition to the term "authors' rights". Neighbouring rights is a more literal translation of the original French droits voisins. Both authors' rights and related rights are copyrights in the sense of English or U.S. law.

Sweat of the brow Copyright law doctrine

Sweat of the brow is an intellectual property law doctrine, chiefly related to copyright law. According to this doctrine, an author gains rights through simple diligence during the creation of a work, such as a database, or a directory. Substantial creativity or "originality" is not required.

Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright. In the case appealed, Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own, after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed.

Derivative work Expressive work created from a major part of a different, original artwork

In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, previously created first work. The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in form from the first. The transformation, modification or adaptation of the work must be substantial and bear its author's personality sufficiently to be original and thus protected by copyright. Translations, cinematic adaptations and musical arrangements are common types of derivative works.

Under the law of United Kingdom, a copyright is an intangible property right subsisting in certain qualifying subject-matter. Copyright law is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended from time to time. As a result of increasing legal integration and harmonisation throughout the European Union a complete picture of the law can only be acquired through recourse to EU jurisprudence, although this is likely to change by the expiration of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020, the UK having left the EU on 31 January 2020. On 12 September 2018 the European Parliament approved new copyright rules to help secure the rights of writers and musicians.

The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time limit, and generally expire 70 years after the author's death. In the United States, any work published before January 1, 1925, is generally considered public domain.

Collective work work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published under the direction of one natural or legal person who owns the copyright in the work as a whole

A collective work is a work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published under the direction of one natural or legal person who owns the copyright in the work as a whole. Definitions vary considerably from one country to another, but usually treat ownership of the work as a whole as distinct from ownership of the individual contributions, so the individual authors may retain the right to publish their work elsewhere. It is common for publication of articles on the Internet, when isolated from the context of the overall work, to be considered to be outside of the standard agreement between the author and the owner of the collective work.

The basic legal instrument governing copyright law in Georgia is the Law on Copyright and Neighboring Rights of June 22, 1999 replacing Art. 488–528 of the Georgian Civil Code of 1964. While the old law had followed the Soviet Fundamentals of 1961, the new law is largely influenced by the copyright law of the European Union.

Collective work (US) copyright term in U.S. law

A collective work in the Copyright law of the United States is a work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published into a collective whole. The owner of the work has the property rights in the collective work, but the authors of the individual works may retain rights in their contributions. Electronic reproduction of the whole work is allowed, but electronic reproduction of the individual works on their own, outside the context of the work as a whole, may constitute an infringement of copyright.

References

  1. 1 2 US Copyright Office (October 2013). "Circular 14: Copyright in Derivative Works and Compilations" (PDF). copyright.gov. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
  2. 1 2 Wilkof, Neil; Basheer, Shamnad (2012-08-30). Overlapping Intellectual Property Rights. OUP Oxford. 9.12, 9.14. ISBN   9780191642890.
  3. 1 2 Jensen, Mary Brandt (1996-01-01). Does Your Project Have a Copyright Problem?: A Decision-making Guide for Librarians. McFarland. p. 57. ISBN   9780786402823.
  4. ↑ Stim, Richard (2014-03-11). Patent, Copyright & Trademark: An Intellectual Property Desk Reference. Nolo. p. 198. ISBN   9781413319705.
  5. ↑ Wilkof, Neil; Basheer, Shamnad (2012-08-30). Overlapping Intellectual Property Rights. OUP Oxford. 9.10. ISBN   9780191642890.
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