Re: "hot news" myth

Dan Agin <specpress[_at_]earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> It seems to me that if there are no proprietary rights resulting
> from collecting names for a telephone book, there are also no such
> rights for collecting news (facts). Which means a modern court, to
> be consistent in the face of the Feist v. Rural decision, will
> probably overturn INS v. AP.

There are a few things wrong with this.

(1) The Feist court did not say that no proprietary rights result from collecting names for a telephone book; they said only that in the Feist case the selection and arrangement of those names was not sufficiently original to meet the threshold necessary for copyright protection. It is not hard to imagine circumstances under which the same data, differently arranged, might well give rise to copyright protection (such as in a more creative "Yellow Pages" type of directory).

(2) Feist dealt with copyright; INS dealt with misappropriation.

(3) Feist dealt with protection for the selection and arrangement of unprotected facts; INS's "hot news" misappropriation theory defined circumstances giving rise to protection (albeit short-term) for the facts themselves.

There is no inconsistency (and actually very little connection at all) between the two cases.

Bob Cumbow
<cumbr[_at_]perkinscoie.com>   Received on Thu May 29 1997 - 19:33:32 GMT