Opinion ID: 2972009
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Catalog and part numbers.

Text: ATC claims copyright protection for its catalog and part numbers under two different theories. First, ATC argues that its catalog is a creative classification scheme, or taxonomy, which sorts parts into categories and sub-categories, and allocates numbers to each part. Under this theory, the individual part numbers would be protected as the copyrightable expressions of the overall taxonomy. Second, ATC argues that even if the numbers themselves are not protected by copyright, the catalog as a whole is protected as a creative and original compilation of data. Under neither theory are the catalog or part numbers eligible for copyright protection. ATC’s parts-classification scheme divides transmission parts into a series of categories and subcategories. There are three basic categories: brand, transmission type, and type of part. In addition, a suffix field is available to further sub-divide a particular part when appropriate. Within each category, several subcategories have been created. In the brand category the sub-categories are relatively obvious: the transmissions are listed by manufacturer. In the part category the sub-categories are less obvious, and require decisions such as whether to have a single category of rings, of which some are sealing rings and some are O-rings, or to have two distinct categories, sealing rings and O-rings. Each of the three basic categories and the optional suffix are represented in each part number by a two-digit or three-digit field (with the occasional letter), within which the transmission types or parts are numbered in order, with gaps being left in each sub-category to accommodate new parts in the future. Although all parts within a subcategory are numbered sequentially, the ordering of the sub-categories within a field, or the parts within a sub-category appears to be random. As such, the fact that an “O-ring pump” and an “O-ring pump bolt” are in the same general range of numbers is no accident. But the fact that O-rings in general are numbered in the 300’s, and the fact that these two parts are numbered 311 and 312 rather than 341 and 342, are accidental. Each discrete transmission part will have a number that is between five and nine digits and/or letters. ATC claims that its numbering scheme involves several different types of creativity: (1) deciding what kind of information to convey in part numbers; (2) predicting future developments in the transmission parts industry and deciding how many slots to leave open in a given sub-category to allow for those developments; (3) deciding whether an apparently novel part that does not obviously fit in any of the existing classifications should be assigned a new category of its own or placed in an existing category, and, if the latter, which one; (4) designing the part numbers; and (5) devising the overall taxonomy of part numbers that places the parts into different categories. An example of this last type of creativity would be the decision to include in the catalog entries for “Pressure Plate, Intermediate (Top)” (assigned number 144) No. 03-6505 ATC Distribution Group, Inc. v. Whatever It Takes, et al. Page 5 and “Pressure Plate, Intermediate (Bottom)” (145), as opposed to using one unitary entry for “Pressure Plate, Intermediate,” but adding a suffix to that part number that differentiates between top (1441) and bottom (1442) plates.
Classification schemes can in principle be creative enough to satisfy the originality requirement of copyright protection. See Am. Dental Ass’n v. Delta Dental Plans Ass’n, 126 F.3d 977, 979 (7th Cir. 1997) (“Facts do not supply their own principles of organization. Classification is a creative endeavor. . . . There can be multiple, and equally original,3 biographies of the same person’s life, and multiple original taxonomies of a field of knowledge.”). None of ATC’s claimed creative endeavors seem particularly creative when compared to a great painting or novel, but the Supreme Court has made clear that only a bare minimum amount of creativity is required to satisfy the constitutional originality requirement. See Feist, 499 U.S. at 345 (“Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity.”). At least some of the decisions made by ATC are arguably “non-obvious choices” made from “among more than a few options.” See Matthew Bender & Co. v. West Publ’g Co., 158 F.3d 674, 682 (2d Cir. 1998). Original and creative ideas, however, are not copyrightable, because 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) provides that “in no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of [its] form.” Section 102(b) codifies the common-law principle that “[u]nlike a patent, a copyright gives no exclusive right to the art disclosed; protection is given only to the expression of the idea – not the idea itself.” Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201, 217 (1954); see also Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 387 F.3d 522, 538 (6th Cir. 2004) (“the idea-expression divide . . . distinguishes the original work’s protectable elements from its unprotectable ones”). And all of the creative aspects of the ATC classification scheme are just that: ideas. ATC cannot copyright its prediction of how many types of sealing ring will be developed in the future, its judgment that O-rings and sealing rings should form two separate categories of parts, or its judgment that a new part belongs with the retainers as opposed to the pressure plates.4 The expression of ATC’s ideas about part classification and the future of the transmission parts market is not barred from copyright protection by the idea-expression distinction. It is barred, however, in part by the “merger doctrine,” and in part by the originality requirement. For almost all of the types of creativity claimed by ATC, there is only one reasonable way to express the underlying idea. For example, the only way to express the prediction that a maximum of four additional types of sealing ring might be developed is to leave four numbers unallocated, and the only way to express the idea that a novel part should be placed with the sealing rings rather than with the gaskets is to place that part with the sealing rings. Under the merger doctrine, “when there is essentially only one way to express an idea, the idea and its expression are inseparable [i.e., they merge,] and copyright is no bar to copying that expression.” Kohus v. Mariol, 328 F.3d 848, 856 (6th Cir. 2003) (alteration in original, internal citation omitted). 3 The district court disagreed with American Dental’s holding that taxonomies can be copyrighted, on the ground that they are “useful articles” excluded from copyright protection by 17 U.S.C. § 101. However section 101 only limits the extent to which useful articles can receive copyright protection in the context of “[p]ictorial, graphic, and sculptural works,” and further defines a useful article as an article that has a function other than conveying information. As such, the usefulness of a taxonomy, which is intended to convey information, and which is neither pictorial, graphic, nor sculptural, does not preclude its being eligible for copyright protection under section 101. 4 As the district court notes, permitting copyright protection for ATC’s choice of where in the catalog to locate a new part would be akin to granting copyright protection to a grocer who decides to display a new type of heirloom tomato with the gourmet produce, as opposed to with the other tomatoes or the locally grown produce. No. 03-6505 ATC Distribution Group, Inc. v. Whatever It Takes, et al. Page 6 The only aspect of the numbering system that does not merge with the underlying idea is the allocation of numbers to each sub-category, and ultimately to each part. ATC argues that its individual part numbers are copyright protected as expressions of the catalog as a whole, and cites as authority the Seventh Circuit’s holding in American Dental, which held that the American Dental Association’s Code on Dental Procedures and Nomenclature was copyrightable. See 126 F.3d at 979. The Code classified dental procedures into groups, with each procedure receiving a number, a short description, and a long description. Id. at 977. For example, number 04267 was assigned to the short description “guided tissue regeneration–nonresorbable barrier, per site, per tooth (includes membrane removal).” Ibid. The Seventh Circuit held that the numbers assigned to each procedure were copyrightable, in addition to the long and short descriptions of each procedure. Id. at 979. The American Dental court’s rationale for holding that the individual procedure numbers were copyrightable is rather opaque: Number 04267 reads “guided tissue regeneration–nonresorbable barrier, per site, per tooth” but could have read “regeneration of tissue, guided by nonresorbable barrier, one site and tooth per entry”. Or “use of barrier to guide regeneration of tissue, without regard to the number of sites per tooth and whether or not the barrier is resorbable”. The first variation is linguistic, the second substantive; in each case the decision to use the actual description is original to the ADA, not knuckling under to an order imposed on language by some “fact” about dental procedures. Blood is shed in the ADA’s committees about which description is preferable. The number assigned to any one of the three descriptions could have had four or six digits rather than five; guided tissue regeneration could have been placed in the 2500 series rather than the 4200 series; again any of these choices is original to the author of a taxonomy, and another author could do things differently. Every number in the ADA’s Code begins with zero, assuring a large supply of unused numbers for procedures to be devised or reclassified in the future; an author could have elected instead to leave wide gaps inside the sequence. A catalog that initially assigns 04266, 04267, 04268 to three procedures will over time depart substantively from one that initially assigns 42660, 42670, and 42680 to the same three procedures. So all three elements of the Code–numbers, short descriptions, and long descriptions, are copyrightable subject matter under 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). Ibid. Almost all of this passage concerns either the wording of the descriptions, or the creative thought that went into the underlying taxonomy, such as the decision to leave gaps in the numbering system. The discussion of the numbers themselves is limited to two immaterial observations: that numbers in the 4200’s rather than the 2500’s were assigned to guided tissue regeneration; and that the numbers assigned to a particular procedure in a catalog will differ depending on the prior allocation of numbers to other procedures. Neither of these facts evidences any creativity by the ADA that would render the numbers eligible for copyright protection. The mere fact that numbers are attached to, or are a by-product of categories and descriptions that are copyrightable does not render the numbers themselves copyrightable. See Southco, Inc. v. Kanebridge Corp., 258 F.3d 148, 151 & n.5 (3d Cir. 2001) (“Southco I”) (“For purposes of copyright law . . . [a] numbering system itself and the actual numbers produced by the system are two very different works,” such that even if the underlying system is original and creative, the numbers themselves are not copyrightable unless they are assigned to parts in a creative way).5 Even assuming, arguendo, that some strings of numbers used to designate an item or procedure could be sufficiently creative to merit copyright protection, the parts numbers at issue in the case before us do not evidence any such creativity. ATC’s allocation of numbers to parts was an essentially random 5 The Third Circuit subsequently noted in Southco, Inc. v. Kanebridge Corp., 324 F.3d 190 (3d Cir. 2003) (“Southco II”), that the district court had, on remand after Southco I, misinterpreted the earlier decision as precluding the possibility of creative numbering. The Southco II court therefore remanded once again for examination of that issue, but did not question the underlying principle that part numbers cannot be protected by copyright absent such creativity. No. 03-6505 ATC Distribution Group, Inc. v. Whatever It Takes, et al. Page 7 process, serving only to provide a useful shorthand way of referring to each part. The only reason that a “sealing ring, pump slide” is allocated number 176 is the random ordering of sub-categories of parts, and the random ordering of parts within that sub-category. Were it not for a series of random orderings within each category field, a given part could be 47165 or 89386. As such, the particular numbers allocated to each part do not express any of the creative ideas that went into the classification scheme in any way that could be considered eligible for copyright protection. See Mitel, Inc. v. Iqtel, Inc., 124 F.3d 1366, 1374 (10th Cir. 1997) (“[T]he random and arbitrary use of numbers in the public domain does not evince enough originality to distinguish authorship.”) (internal citation omitted). These numbers are no more copyrightable than would be the fruit of an author’s labors if she wrote a book and then “translated” it into numbers using a random number generator for each letter in every word. Even if the text in English was copyrightable, the randomly generated list of numbers that comprised the “translation” could not be. Originality aside, there are other sound reasons for denying copyright protection to short “works,” such as part numbers. Although the fact that ATC had a copyright in the number 45607 might not ultimately preclude other people or entities from using that number in other contexts, given the defenses of fair use and independent creation available to those accused of copyright infringement, anyone using that number in a commercial context would face the time-consuming and expensive prospect of having to defend themselves against such claims. This would not only be extremely inefficient, but would provide a way for the creators of otherwise uncopyrightable ideas or works to gain some degree of copyright protection through the back door simply by assigning short numbers or other shorthand phrases to those ideas or works (or their component parts). See SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, L.P. v. Watson Pharms., Inc., 211 F.3d 21, 29 n.5 (2d Cir. 2000) (“the danger lurking in copyright protection for labels is that the tail threatens to wag the dog – proprietors at times seize on copyright protection for the label in order to leverage their thin copyright protection over the text . . . on the label into a monopoly on the typically uncopyrightable product to which it is attached.”) (internal quotation and citation omitted). Indeed, the Copyright Office will not register a short name, phrase, or expression, such as the name of a product or service, even if it is novel or distinctive. See 37 C.F.R. § 202.1 (regulation issued by the Copyright Office under 17 U.S.C. § 702, stating that short phrases such as names are not subject to copyright protection); Copyright Office Circular 34 (available at http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ34.html). While the use without compensation of one’s labors may seem unfair, “this is not ‘some unforeseen byproduct of a statutory scheme.’ It is, rather, ‘the essence of copyright,’ and a constitutional requirement. The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but ‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’” Feist, 499 U.S. at 349 (internal citations omitted). Permitting uncopyrightable materials to receive protection simply by virtue of adding a number or label would allow an end run around that constitutional requirement. As a last resort, ATC suggested during oral argument that even if neither the ideas that gave rise to the parts numbers, nor the individual part numbers, qua expressions of those ideas, are copyrightable, the part numbers taken as a whole were somehow copyrightable as a middle ground between the two, much in the same way that while neither the basic idea behind a novel nor the individual words used to write it are protected, the story that those words form when taken together is copyrightable. The flaw in this argument is that there is no such middle ground in this case. Unlike the words that comprise a novel, which add up to a story, the numbers used in ATC’s catalog only add up to a long list of numbers. Putting all the numbers together does not make them expressive in the way that putting words together makes a narrative. b. The ATC catalog as a creative compilation of parts data. The second way in which the ATC catalog could be eligible for copyright protection is as a compilation of data. See 17 U.S.C. § 103 (providing for copyright protection for a compilation, limited to “the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work”); see also id. § 101 (“A ‘compilation’ is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that No. 03-6505 ATC Distribution Group, Inc. v. Whatever It Takes, et al. Page 8 the resulting work as6 a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term ‘compilation’ includes collective works.”). The requirement that the selection, coordination, or arrangement of data constitutes an independent work of authorship over and above the data themselves is not a stringent one. “A compiler may settle upon a selection or arrangement that others have used; novelty is not required. Originality requires only that the author make the selection or arrangement independently (i.e., without copying that selection or arrangement from another work), and that it display some minimal level of creativity.” Feist, 499 U.S. at 358. The Feist Court cautioned, though, that “the selection and arrangement of facts cannot be so mechanical or routine as to require no creativity whatsoever. The standard of originality is low, but it does exist.” Id. at 362. The district court found ATC’s catalog insufficiently original to receive protection as a compilation on two grounds. First, the design, ordering, and sorting of transmission parts in the catalog is almost identical to the McCarty catalog on which it was based. Second, even without the similarity of the two catalogs, the “commonplace,” “practically inevitable” manner in which the parts are listed is insufficiently creative to merit protection. The ATC catalog and the McCarty catalog are similar in many ways. For example, both catalogs contain tables showing the transmission type and page number for each model of vehicle. In addition, both begin the listings for each transmission with an illustration of the parts for that transmission. These copied aspects of the catalog are ineligible for copyright protection. See Feist, 499 U.S. at 358. As the district court acknowledged, however, there are differences between the two catalogs in the manner in which the transmission parts for each transmission type are listed. ATC’s catalog lists the parts in different categories than does the McCarty catalog, and describes the parts differently. The district court dismissed these differences as negligible, and found that the entire catalog was copied from the McCarty catalog; but this conclusion begs the question whether the way in which ATC arranges7 the transmission parts is sufficiently creative to constitute an original compilation. If not, then the catalog is not protected by copyright whether it was copied or not. If so, then the differences between the catalogs can hardly be described as negligible given that the one aspect in which they differ is sufficient to make the ATC catalog a protected compilation. For the most part, cases considering the originality of data selection in purported compilations confirm that the creativity bar has been set extremely low. See, e.g., Publ’ns Int’l v. Meredith Corp., 88 F.3d 473, 481 (7th Cir. 1996) (order and arrangement of uncopyrighted recipes is sufficiently creative to constitute original compilation); CCC Info. Servs., Inc. v. MacLean Hunter Mkt. Reports, Inc., 44 F.3d 61, 67 (2d Cir. 1994) (sufficient creativity displayed in collection of used car values when compiler divided the used car market into geographical regions, selected optional features for inclusion, adjusted for mileage in 5,000 mile increments (rather than, say, 7,000), used the abstract concept of the “average vehicle” as the subject of a valuation, and decided how many years’ models to include in the guide). The ATC catalog does not even have this minimal level of creativity, however, because the only aspect of the catalog that differs from the McCarty catalog is the choice of headings and arrangement of the parts into categories – two minor differences that we have previously held to be insufficiently creative to justify copyright protection. In J. Thomas Distributors v. Greenline Distributors, No. 95-2100, 1996 U.S. App. LEXIS 29035, 1996 WL 636138 (6th Cir. October 31, 1996) (unpublished opinion), we held that a catalog that featured additional 6 The American Dental court stated that the ADA taxonomy of dental procedures could not be protected as a compilation under 17 U.S.C. § 103, because “[i]t could be a compilation only if its elements existed independently and the ADA merely put them in order.” 126 F.3d at 980. This requirement that the elements of a compilation must exist independently of the act of compilation cannot be reconciled with the statutory language, which states that a compilation is a collection or assembly of “preexisting materials or of data.” 17 U.S.C. § 103 (emphasis added). 7 The selection of data is not an issue in this case. Unlike, for example, the selection of nine particular pitching statistics on a form intended to allow baseball fans to predict the outcome of games, see Kregos v. Associated Press, 937 F.2d 700, 704 (2d. Cir. 1991), ATC included in its catalog every transmission part available. No. 03-6505 ATC Distribution Group, Inc. v. Whatever It Takes, et al. Page 9 subheadings and a rearranged sequence of information was, while “organized in a manner unknown to the industry prior to its publication,” and “perhaps original,” nonetheless “typical, if not inevitable,” and lacking in the “requisite creativity for copyright protection.” See 1996 U.S. App. LEXIS 29035, at -. To be sure, ATC could have arranged the parts information in other ways that were potentially less clear or useful, but this fact alone is insufficient to demonstrate the creativity necessary for copyright protection. See BellSouth Adver. & Publ’g Corp. v. Donnelley Info. Publ’g, Inc., 999 F.2d 1436, 1443 (11th Cir. 1993) (“The relevant inquiry [for copyright purposes] is not whether there is some imaginable, although manifestly less useful, method of arranging business telephone listings.”). ATC’s catalog is not eligible for copyright protection as a compilation.