their original expression but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. Only the compiler’s selection and arrangement may be protected; however, the raw facts may be copied at will. The Court rejected the doctrine of the “sweat of the brow” as this doctrine had numerous flaws, the most glaring being that it extended copyright protection in a compilation beyond selection and arrangement – the compiler’s original contributions – to the facts themselves. A subsequent compiler was not entitled to take one word of information previously published, but rather had to independently work out the matter for himself, so as to arrive at the same result from the same common sources of information. “Sweat of the brow” courts thereby eschewed the most fundamental axiom of copyright law that no one may copyright facts or ideas. The sweat of the brow doctrine flouted basic copyright principles and it creates a monopoly in public domain materials without the necessary justification of protecting and encouraging the creation of writings by authors.
34. The judgment in Matthew Bender & Co., Inc. v. West Publishing Co., 158 F.3d 674 (2nd Cir. 1998), is of United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, which directly covers the reports of the judgments of the courts. The facts involved in the case are that the West Publishing Co. and West Publishing Corp. (“West”) obtain the text of judicial opinions directly from courts. It alters these texts into (i) independently composed features, such as syllabus, headnotes which summarize the specific points of law recited in each opinion and key numbers which categorize points of law into different legal topics and sub-topics and (ii) additions of certain factual information to the text of the opinions, including parallel or alternative citations to cases, attorney information, and data on subsequent procedural history. West publishes the case reports in different series of case reporters collectively known as “National Reporter System”. Two series of case reporters at issue in that case were the Supreme Court Reporter and the Federal Reporter. HyperLaw publishes and markets CD-ROMs which are compilations of the Supreme Court and the United States Court of Appeals that cover approximately the same ground. HyperLaw intends to expand its CD-ROM product taking the material from the West publications. HyperLaw intervened and sought a judgment declaring that the individual West case reports that are left after redaction of the first category of alterations do not contain copyrightable material. It was held by the Court that for copyright protection, the material does not require novelty or invention, but minimal creativity is required. All of West’s alterations to judicial opinions involve the addition and arrangement of facts, or the rearrangement of data already included in the opinions, and, therefore, any creativity in these elements of West’s case reports lies in West’s selection and arrangement of this information. West’s choices on selection and arrangement can reasonably be viewed as obvious, typical and lacking even minimal creativity. Copyright protection is unavailable for both derivative works and compilations alike unless, when analysed as a whole, they display sufficient originality so as to amount to an original work of authorship. Originality requires only that the author makes the selection or arrangement independently and that it displays some material with minimal level of creativity. While a copy of something in the public domain will not, if it be merely a copy, support a copyright, a distinguishable