> Last week in a class on programming, I scribbled the following sentence
> into a web form I was demonstrating: (long logical analysis omitted)
In Cook v. Robbins, 56 USPQ2d 1769 (CA 9 2000) the words "meter drop" and "rolling stock" were held (in the opinion of most commentators, incorrectly) to be capable of copyright protection (and indeed, they were held infringed).
In CDN Inc. v. Kapes (CA 9) 53 USPQ2d 1032 (1999) the court held that prices for coins in a wholesale price guide were copyrighted (distinguishing Feist because the prices were not "facts").
In American Dental Association v. Delta Dental Plans Association (CA 7) 44 USPQ2d 1296 (1997) the court held that a taxonomy of dental procedures and nomenclature, which consists of numbers, short descriptions, and long descriptions, is copyrightable subject matter. I believe that the AMA's codes (which are numbers or alphanumeric representations) have also been held to be copyrighted.
There are many other cases that could be cited to support the notion that even a short phrase, if original, could be copyrighted (or perhaps more appropriately - that a court would fashion a remedy in the face of literal copying of such phrase)
The good professors on this list would probably point out that each of these cases were wrongly decided, and indeed, they may have been. But in law, and particularly the practice of it as opposed to the fanciful discussion that often takes place, what the law *is* can be quite different than what the law says. Applying raw logic to a legal question is not normally going to give you the correct result in the real world.
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