Law Commons^™

No "Sweat"? Copyright And Other Protection Of Works Of Information After Feist V. Rural Telephone, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court's unanimous decision last Term in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. proscribed copyright protection for works of information that fail to manifest a modicum of creative originality in selection or arrangement. Discarding a long – if lately uneasy – tradition of U.S. copyright coverage of informational works that display far greater industriousness than imagination, the Court ruled that copyright does not secure the "sweat of the brow" or the investment of resources in the compilation of a work of information. The Court thus stripped away or sharply reduced the copyright protection afforded a variety …

Computer Programs In Europe: A Comparative Analysis Of The 1991 Ec Software Directive, Jerome Huet, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

Long awaited – if not feared – in the computer industry, where its elaboration had evoked heated debate, the European Council Directive of May 14, 1991 on the Legal Protection of Computer Programs (the "Directive" or "Software Directive")has imposed common principles of copyright protection on the twelve Member States of the European Community (the "EC", the "Community"). As it declares in its preamble, the Directive responds to the need to ensure the proper functioning of a single marketand, to that end, to eliminate man), of the current differences among the Member States' legal systems.

In the domain of European copyright …