ABSTRACT
The so-called “Feist” decision stems from an American court case between Feist Publications and the Rural Telephone Service Co. over the copyright to “white-pages” telephone directory information. The case was argued all the way to the United States Supreme Court [1991 111 SCt 1282 (decided 27 March 1991)] which decided in favour of Feist and allowed it access to the telephone directory information. There were really two issues which led to the court’s decision. First there was a lack of originality in the selection and arrangement of the contents: all subscribers were included in the directory and alphabetical ordering was so natural that no creativity was involved. The court was not to be swayed by “sweat of the brow” arguments which had tradi tionally protected the work of the creators of data collections; originali ty and creativity were paramount. The second issue was that the compa ny was required to make such a listing (a white-pages directory) as a condition of doing business; otherwise its customers could not access its service (connection to other subscribers).
