On 5/2/98, Shelly Warwick <swarwick[_at_]sprynet.com> wrote:
>
> Terry Carroll <carroll[_at_]tjc.com> wrote, (among other things):
> >
> > Feist is kind of a catch-22 here: The core holding of Feist, that a
> > database is not within the scope of the copyright clause, is precisely
> > what permits protection authorized by another clause.
>
> Gee, and I thought Feist held that a database in order to be protected
> had to exhibit a very minimum level of originality in the selection and
> arrangement, not that databases couldn't be protected.
Let's not confuse a physical database with a compilation of data that comes from that database. Feist held that a "factual compilation" has very thin copyright. Any potential copyrightability comes from the selection and arrangement of the data, not the underlying facts themselves. This does not mean the selection and arrangement of the physical database. Rather, it means the selection and arrangement of the expression of the data in some other form, usually literary.
"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."
Feist at 349.
Terry's conclusion is a fair one because even though Feist never even mentioned the word "database" in its decision, if a physical database has nothing but facts in it, it is unprotectable by copyright. Now one might argue whether the lack of database protection is the "core" holding of Feist. Facts were never copyrightable, even before Feist. However, one of the things that Feist dispensed with was the notion that the labor in taking a bunch of facts and putting them together, even in banal form, would not be rewarded with copyright protection.
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