## Facts

- Rural Telephone Service Company was a regulated local telephone utility required by state law to publish a directory of its subscribers.
- Rural’s directory included “white pages” listing subscriber names, addresses, and telephone numbers in alphabetical order.
- Feist Publications produced regional directories and sought to license Rural’s white-pages listings; Rural refused.
- Feist copied Rural’s subscriber listings without permission and incorporated them into Feist’s directory; some copied entries matched Rural’s listings.
- Rural used fictitious “seed” entries to detect copying, and those entries appeared in Feist’s directory.
- Rural sued Feist for copyright infringement based on Feist’s copying of the white-pages listings.

## Issues

1. Whether the names, addresses, and telephone numbers in a telephone directory’s white pages are copyrightable.
2. Whether an alphabetical arrangement of those facts qualifies as an “original” compilation under the Copyright Act.
3. Whether copying such listings constitutes infringement when the compilation lacks copyrightable originality.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Tenth Circuit.
- The Court held Rural’s white pages were not entitled to copyright protection because they lacked the required originality.
- The Court concluded that, without a valid copyright in the white pages, Feist’s copying of the listings did not constitute infringement.

## Legal Principles

- Copyright protection requires originality, meaning independent creation plus a minimal degree of creativity.
- Facts are not copyrightable; they are part of the public domain, even if collecting them required substantial effort.
- A factual compilation is protected only to the extent its selection, coordination, or arrangement is original; protection does not extend to the underlying facts.
- The “sweat of the brow” theory—granting protection based on labor and expense alone—is rejected.
- Infringement requires (1) ownership of a valid copyright and (2) copying of constituent elements that are original; copying unprotectable facts does not satisfy this standard.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Rural’s alphabetized white-pages listings reflected an exhaustive, functionally dictated compilation of facts without the minimal creativity required for originality; because the compilation was uncopyrightable, Feist’s copying did not amount to copyright infringement.


Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)