Originality is the direct requirement for copyrightability in the Feist v. Rural (1991) decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, concerned with copyright in collections of data.

Originality disaggregates into a minimal degree of creativity and independent creation.

Originality can be understood from the judgment as involving labor. As the head concept, it subsumes all antecedent activities. They can then all be understood as labor and this is supported by their characterization. Creativity and labor are revealed as complementary. The tension between the requirement for creativity and previous understandings of copyright as subsisting in labor expended is thereby resolved and the incentive role for intellectual labor is restored. Lower levels of labor continue to be excluded.

Lower levels of labor were strongly tending to become machine processes, rather than human labor, at the time of the judgment. We can therefore understand a broad labor theory of copyright to have been renewed.

The determination of originality is reduced to a four stage test. First, is there non-computational activity; second, is there a sufficient level of such activity; third, is a sufficient amount of that level of activity; and, fourth, who conducted that activity.

The judgment has finally been fully resolved.