decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Feist v. Rural | 147 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Feist v. Rural
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 05 2013 @ 12:21 PM EDT
Interesting point about typefaces.
You cannot claim copyright on the design, but you can claim copyright on the
font file produced when a complete font is created.
For example, you could not copyright an 'i' with a little heart above it as
beloved by any female under 15.
But you can design a whole font with heart decorations when you create it.

I guess there is something about being minimally creative that would preclude
too many other expressions.

An interesting analogy would be a Musician that claimed copyright on the note
'E'
Or an artist who painted a canvas completely blue.

Jane

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Identification of the creative element of expression
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 05 2013 @ 02:40 PM EDT

Caveat: All my humble opinions of course. Opinions which could help explain why the Courts rule the way they do.

The concept I'm about to outline I feel applies equally to both patent and copyright protections. In the case of Copyright the element in consideration is the expression. In the case of patents the element in consideration would be the implementation.

To be able to claim the protection you have to be able to identify what the creative element is. If you can not identify the creative element - then protection is unwarranted. Once the creative element is identified, then the protection can be applied to that element and only that element.

Is there creativity involved in providing a list of facts ordered alphabetically? I'd say no. One should understand the alphabet in Grade 1 and one should be able to lookup words in the Dictonary (which is arranged alphabetically) by grade 2.

For an adult to claim there's some kind of creative element applied to a list of facts order alphabetically (the basic phone book) - well... does that adult really want the rest of us to view the individual has a lower intelligence then a child in grade 2?

A recipe can certainly be creativity or original
Are you talking about the expression of the idea or the idea itself? If you are talking about the expression of the idea (the idea being the new recipe that produces the new delectable dish) then I have to disagree. There's nothing creative in the expression of listing out the specific ingredients.

If you are talking about the idea itself (the development and existence of the new dish) then I would agree that there may very well be creativity involved.

But copyright doesn't protect the idea. It only protects the particular expression of an idea. The exchange is immediate dissemination of the idea to the public for receiving a limited monopoly on the expression.

The idea of Rock-n-roll was not protectable by Copyright. The song created under the musical expression of Rock-n-roll called "Blue Suede Shoes" is appropriate to receive copyright protection.

So... you feel basic (facts only) recipes should warrant copyright protection. My question:

    What is the creative element in the expression of that recipe?
You could say the "Image of the finished product" but then you'd merely be outlining what the Court has already said:
Copyright protection may, however, extend to substantial literary expression — a description, explanation, or illustration, for example — that accompanies a recipe
So... on a basic recipe - just a list of facts (ingredients, the preperation steps): what is the creative element?

If no creative element exists in the expression, then it doesn't qualify for copyright protection.

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )