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[edit] CCC INFORMATION SERVICES, INC. v. MACLEAN HUNTER MARKET REPORTS, INC.

(available at: http://floridalawfirm.com/iplaw/ccc2.html among other places)

In Kregos v. Associated Press, 937 F.2d 700, 706-07 (2d Cir.1991), for example, we reversed a ruling of the district court that the selection of nine statistical categories for use on a baseball pitching form failed to demonstrate the necessary originality.

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For other examples of cases upholding data selection as meeting copyright's originality requirement, see 1 William F. Patry, Copyright Law and Practice (1994). They include: the choice of categories of Medicaid data to include in charts; the 'judgement and knowledge of the author respecting the social standing and societal relations of a limited class of the general public;'a daily time organizer; the choice of 'true' public relations firms to include in a directory; a list of state tariffs on pay telephones; selection of the most important and helpful cross-streets and assignment of address numbers for the streets; information about cable television systems throughout the United States.... The key factor is the exercise of some editorial judgment in the selection of data. Id. at 199-200.

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the Kregos opinion went on to describe different categories of ideas. It distinguished between, on the one hand, those ideas that undertake to advance the understanding of phenomena or the solution of problems, such as the identification of the symptoms that are the most useful in identifying the presence of a particular disease; and those, like the pitching form there at issue, that do not undertake to explain phenomena or furnish solutions, but are infused with the author's taste or opinion. Kregos postulated that the importance of keeping ideas free from private ownership is far greater for ideas of the first category, directed to the understanding of phenomena or the solving of problems, than for those that merely represent the author's taste or opinion and therefore do not materially assist the understanding of future thinkers.

As to the latter category, the opinion asserted that, so long as the selections reflected in the compilation "involve matters of taste and personal opinion, there is no serious risk that withholding the merger doctrine," 937 F.2d at 707 (emphasis added), would inflict serious injury on the policy underlying the rule that forbids granting protection to an idea. This was in contrast to analyses belonging to the first category--building blocks of understanding--as to which "protecting the [necessary] 'expression' of the selection would clearly risk protecting the idea of the analysis." Id at 707.

(footnotes omitted)

[edit] Kregos v AP

(available at: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/DVD/cases/Kregos_v_AP.txt among other places)

As long as selections of facts involve matters of taste and personal opinion, there is no serious risk that withholding the merger doctrine will extend protection to an idea. That was surely the case with the selection of premium baseball cards in Eckes. It is also true of a selection of prominent families for inclusion in a social directory. See Social Register Ass'n v. Murphy, 128 F. 116 (C.C.D.R.I. 1904); see also New York Times Co. v. Roxbury Data Interface, Inc., 434 F. Supp. 217, 222 n.2 (D.N.J. 1977). However, where a selection of data is the first step in an analysis that yields a precise result or even a better-than-average probability of some result, protecting the "expression" of the selection would clearly risk protecting the idea of the analysis.

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