Star Athletica no relation LLC v. Varsity Brands Inc. ineligible for copyright protection
The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether a particular work can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not. In this context, "originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author" (insofar as it somehow reflects the author's personality), rather than "never having occurred or existed before" (which would amount to the protection of something new, as in patent protection).Copyright finds its international commonality in the Berne Convention that creates the foundation of several concepts of international copyright law; however, the threshold for attracting copyright is not defined. This threshold is up to each jurisdiction to determine. While works that do not meet these thresholds are not eligible for copyright protection, they may still be eligible for protection through other intellectual property laws, such as trademarks or design patents (particularly in the case of logos).United States
In United States copyright law, the principle of requiring originality for copyright protection was invoked in the 1991 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service. The court opinion stated that copyright protection could only be granted to "works of authorship" that possess "at least some minimal degree of creativity". As such, mere labor ("sweat of the brow") is not sufficient to establish a copyright claim. For example, the expression of some obvious methods of compilation and computation, such as the Yellow Pages or blank forms, cannot receive a copyright (demonstrated in  Morrissey v. Procter & Gamble), but sufficiently original elements within the work itself can still be eligible for protection.The Supreme Court similarly established in Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc. that artistic elements of a practical article (such as clothing) can be copyrighted if they meet the threshold of originality, and can be identified as art when they are mentally separated from the item's practical aspects.
no relation