page_title: Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co. / Background
caption_attribution_description: Dansk: en telefonbog English: a phone / telephone book / directory Polski: książka telefoniczna
context_page_description: Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340, was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright. In the case appealed, Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own, after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed.
context_section_description: Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc. is a telephone cooperative providing services for areas in northwest Kansas, with headquarters in the small town of Lenora, in Norton County. The company was under a statutory obligation to compile and distribute a "white pages" phone directory of all their customers free of charge as a condition of their monopoly franchise.
  Feist Publications, Inc. specialized in compiling telephone directories from larger geographic areas than Rural from other areas of Kansas. They had licensed the directory of 11 other local directories, with Rural being the only hold-out in the region. Despite Rural's denial of a license to Feist, Feist copied some 4000 entries from Rural's directory. Because Rural had placed a small number of phony entries to detect copying, Feist was caught.
  Prior to this case, the substance of copyright in United States law followed the sweat of the brow doctrine, which gave copyright to anyone who invested significant amount of time and energy into their work. At trial and appeal level the courts followed this doctrine, siding with Rural.
caption: The "white pages" of a telephone directory
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