## Facts

- BellSouth published a Greater Miami classified telephone directory (“Yellow Pages”) and held a registered compilation copyright in the directory.
- The parties stipulated that the directory qualified as a protectable compilation under 17 U.S.C. § 103.
- The directory listed businesses under business-type headings, with listings alphabetized within each heading.
- BellSouth offered a finite list of headings; advertisers selected the headings under which their listings would appear.
- Donnelley entered the Miami market with a competing classified directory.
- Donnelley copied from BellSouth’s directory to build a solicitation database containing business names, addresses, telephone numbers, and business-type/heading information, then used that data to solicit advertisers and publish a competing directory.
- The dispute centered on whether copying listing facts and the associated business-type/heading information infringed BellSouth’s compilation copyright after *Feist*.

## Issues

1. Whether copying factual listing data from a copyrighted classified directory to create a competing directory infringes a compilation copyright when the copied material consists of unprotectable facts.
2. Which features of a Yellow Pages directory constitute protectable “selection, coordination, or arrangement” under *Feist*, and whether Donnelley copied those protectable features.

## Decision

- The en banc Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court’s summary judgment for BellSouth.
- The court held Donnelley did not infringe because it copied unprotectable facts and functional/descriptive business-type information, not protectable selection or arrangement of the compilation as a whole.
- The case was remanded with instructions to enter judgment for Donnelley on the copyright infringement claim.

## Legal Principles

- A compilation copyright protects only the original selection, coordination, or arrangement of facts, not the facts themselves.
- Infringement requires copying protectable elements of the compilation’s selection or arrangement; copying factual content from within a protected compilation is not enough.
- Compilation protection is “thin,” particularly where organization is conventional or functionally dictated (e.g., alphabetical ordering and standard classifications).
- Copyright does not reward effort in gathering facts; “sweat of the brow” does not create rights in factual information.

## Conclusion

Because Donnelley took factual business listing information and functionally descriptive business-type associations without appropriating BellSouth’s protectable selection or arrangement of the directory as a whole, the court found no infringement and ordered judgment for Donnelley.


BellSouth Advert. & Publ'g Corp. v. Donnelley Info. Publ'g, Inc., 999 F.2d 1436 (11th Cir. 1993) (en banc)