Page:Eastern Book Company & Ors vs D.B. Modak & Anr.pdf/50

http://JUDIS.NIC.IN exercise of skill and judgment. The exercise of skill and judgment required to produce the work must not be so trivial that it could be characterized a purely mechanical exercise. The work should be independently created by the author as opposed to copied from the other works and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. The case law relied upon by the learned counsel for the respondents is considered hereinafter.

33. In Feist Publications Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. Inc., 18 USPQ 2d. 1275, Rural Telephone Service Co. publishes a typical telephone directory consisting of white pages and yellow pages. The white pages list in alphabetical order the names of rural subscribers together with their towns and telephone numbers. The yellow pages list Rural’s business subscribers alphabetically by category and feature classified advertisements of various sizes. To obtain white pages listings for its area-wide directory, Feist Publications Inc. approached different telephone companies operating in North West Kansas and offered to pay for the right to use their white pages listings. Of them, only Rural refused. Unable to license Rural’s white pages listings, Feist used them without Rural’s consent. Rural sued for copyright infringement in the District Court taking the position that Feist, in compiling its own directory, could not use the information contained in Rural’s white pages. Rural asserted that Feist’s employees were obliged to travel door to door or conduct a telephone survey to discover the same information for themselves. Feist responded that such efforts were economically impractical and, in any event, unnecessary because the information copied was beyond the scope of copyright protection. The United States Supreme Court held that the sine qua non of copyright is originality. To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author. 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. The requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, no matter how crude, humble or obvious it might be. Originality does not signify novelty; a work may be original even though it closely resembles other works so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying. The Court further held that no one claim originality as to the facts. This is because facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship. The distinction is one between creation and discovery: the first person to find and report a particular fact has not created the fact; he or she has merely discovered its existence. Factual compilations, on the other hand, may possess the requisite originality. The compilation author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected data so that they may be used effectively by readers. These choices as to selection and arrangement, so long as they are made independently by the compiler and entail a minimal degree of creativity, are sufficiently original. Thus, if the compilation author clothes facts with an original collocation of words, he or she may be able to claim a copyright in this written expression. The Court goes on to hold that the primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labour of authors, but to promote the progress of science and useful arts. To this end, copyright assures authors the right to