Copyright and conflicts of law

I have a copyright/conflicts of law question. I understand that the sweat of the brow doctrine, rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in Feist, is still followed in the UK. Is it true then that you could extract the purely factual information from any copyrighted compliation in the U.S. (so long as you didn't reproduce the selection and arrangement), even if it was created by a British author and published in the UK? If so, would it constitute copyright infringement under UK copyright law if you then distributed, displayed, and/or reproduced the extracted information in the UK? Would the extracted information constitute a "lawfully obtained copy" because it was lawfully created under U.S. law (though not under British copyright law) and be excepted from the display and distribution rights in the UK under the first sale doctrine?

Nikki Miller
<nmiller[_at_]chq.byu.edu> Received on Thu Jul 03 1997 - 20:25:44 GMT