On 3/10/98, Ivan Hoffman <ivanlove[_at_]earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Given that an index is one of the explanatory examples provided in the
> work made for hire section of the United States copyright law, and
> given that the concept of originality that is one of the threshold's to
> copyrightability is often quite low, it would seem evident that an index
> is a separately copyrightable work and the unauthorized preparation of
> such an index would therefor likely be considered to be an infringement
> of the copyright in the underlying work.
As indicated by my other posts, the above is, in my opinion, an overstatement. All sorts of "works" are defined in the Copyright Act. In supplementary works alone many are mentioned, including compilations, translations, maps, charts, tables, etc. Throughout the rest of section 101 other works are defined. What does that mean? That means that just about anything is *capable* of copyright, including an index.
Most indexes should probably be looked at as specialized compilations, and, as such, an index would be copyrightable to the extent that its selection, coordination, and arrangement satisfied originality requirements. My opinion is that most ordinary indexes, standing alone, would not satisfy those requirements, but, to say baldly that an index would likely be an infringement, without knowing more, seems bold. The majority of ordinary indexes are simply searches of the text looking for particular key words and phrases, noting the pages they appear on and printing the whole thing up alphabetically. What could be less original than that? A telephone directory, maybe? In fact, as I recall from being in the software industry before making my way into the law, one of the most common complaints users had about software manuals was that the indexes were awful. What did they mean by awful? They had hardly anything in them, and you could never find what the hell you were looking for. Now it's true that you might be able to find a court that would declare that a simple index held a valid copyright, but then you might be able to find a court that would also say that dental procedure numbers are copyrightable subject matter as well.
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