Supreme Court of the United States

FEIST PUBLICATIONS, INC., Petitioner

v.

RURAL TELEPHONE SERVICE COMPANY, INC.

No. 89-1909

499 U.S. 340

Decided March 27, 1991.

     Justice O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

 This case requires us to clarify the extent of copyright protection available to telephone directory white pages.

I

 Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., is a certified public utility that provides telephone service to several communities in northwest Kansas.   It is subject to a state regulation that requires all telephone companies operating in Kansas to issue annually an updated telephone directory.   Accordingly, as a condition of its monopoly franchise, Rural publishes a typical telephone directory, consisting of white pages and yellow pages.   The white pages list in alphabetical order the names of Rural's subscribers, together with their towns and telephone numbers.   The yellow pages list Rural's business subscribers alphabetically by category and feature classified advertisements of various sizes.   Rural distributes its directory free of charge to its subscribers, but earns revenue by selling yellow pages advertisements.

 Feist Publications, Inc., is a publishing company that specializes in area-wide telephone directories.   Unlike a typical   directory, which covers only a particular calling area, Feist's area-wide directories cover a much larger geographical range, reducing the need to call directory assistance or consult multiple directories.   The Feist directory that is the subject of this litigation covers 11 different telephone service areas in 15 counties and contains 46,878 white pages listings--compared to Rural's approximately 7,700 listings.   Like Rural's directory, Feist's is distributed free of charge and includes both white pages and yellow pages.   Feist and Rural compete vigorously for yellow pages advertising.

 As the sole provider of telephone service in its service area, Rural obtains subscriber information quite easily.   Persons desiring telephone service must apply to Rural and provide their names and addresses;  Rural then assigns them a telephone number.   Feist is not a telephone company, let alone one with monopoly status, and therefore lacks independent access to any subscriber information.   To obtain white pages listings for its area-wide directory, Feist approached each of the 11 telephone companies operating in northwest Kansas and offered to pay for the right to use its white pages listings.

 Of the 11 telephone companies, only Rural refused to license its listings to Feist.   Rural's refusal created a problem for Feist, as omitting these listings would have left a gaping hole in its area-wide directory, rendering it less attractive to potential yellow pages advertisers.   In a decision subsequent to that which we review here, the District Court determined that this was precisely the reason Rural refused to license its listings.   The refusal was motivated by an unlawful purpose "to extend its monopoly in telephone service to a monopoly in yellow pages advertising."  Rural Telephone Service Co. v. Feist Publications, Inc., 737 F.Supp. 610, 622 (Kan.1990).

 Unable to license Rural's white pages listings, Feist used them without Rural's consent.   Feist began by removing several thousand listings that fell outside the geographic range of its area-wide directory, then hired personnel to investigate the 4,935 that remained.   These employees verified   the data reported by Rural and sought to obtain additional information.   As a result, a typical Feist listing includes the individual's street address;  most of Rural's listings do not.   Notwithstanding these additions, however,   1,309 of the 46,878 listings in Feist's 1983 directory were identical to listings in Rural's 1982-1983 white pages.   App. 54 (¶  15-16), 57.   Four of these were fictitious listings that Rural had inserted into its directory to detect copying.

 Rural sued for copyright infringement in the District Court for the District of Kansas taking the position that Feist, in compiling its own directory, could not use the information contained in Rural's white pages.   Rural asserted that Feist's employees were obliged to travel door-to-door or conduct a telephone survey to discover the same information for themselves.   Feist responded that such efforts were economically impractical and, in any event, unnecessary because the information copied was beyond the scope of copyright protection. The District Court granted summary judgment to Rural, explaining that "[c]ourts have consistently held that telephone directories are copyrightable" and citing a string of lower court decisions.  663 F.Supp. 214, 218 (1987).   In an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed "for substantially the reasons given by the district court."   App. to Pet. for Cert. 4a, judgt. order reported at 916 F.2d 718 (1990).   We granted certiorari, to determine whether the copyright in Rural's directory protects the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist.

II

A

This case concerns the interaction of two well-established propositions.   The first is that facts are not copyrightable;  the other, that compilations of facts generally are.   Each of these propositions possesses an impeccable pedigree.   That there can be no valid copyright in facts is universally understood.   The most fundamental axiom of copyright law is that   "[n]o author may copyright his ideas or the facts he narrates."   Rural wisely concedes this point, noting in its brief that "[f]acts and discoveries, of course, are not themselves subject to copyright protection."   Brief for Respondent 24.   At the same time, however, it is beyond dispute that compilations of facts are within the subject matter of copyright.   Compilations were expressly mentioned in the Copyright Act of 1909, and again in the Copyright Act of 1976.

 There is an undeniable tension between these two propositions.   Many compilations consist of nothing but raw data--i.e., wholly factual information not accompanied by any original written expression.   On what basis may one claim a copyright in such a work?   Common sense tells us that 100 uncopyrightable facts do not magically change their status when gathered together in one place.   Yet copyright law seems to contemplate that compilations that consist exclusively of facts are potentially within its scope.

    The key to resolving the tension lies in understanding why facts are not copyrightable.   The sine qua non of copyright is originality.   To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author.      Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity.      To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low;  even a slight amount will suffice.   The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, "no matter how crude, humble or obvious" it might be.     Originality does not signify novelty;  a work may be original even though it closely resembles other works so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying.   To illustrate,   assume that two poets, each ignorant of the other, compose   identical poems.   Neither work is novel, yet both are original and, hence, copyrightable.  

 Originality is a constitutional requirement.   The source of Congress' power to enact copyright laws is Article I, §  8, cl. 8, of the Constitution, which authorizes Congress to "secur[e] for limited Times to Authors ... the exclusive Right to their respective Writings."   In two decisions from the late 19th century--The Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 25 L.Ed. 550 (1879);  and Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53, 4 S.Ct. 279, 28 L.Ed. 349 (1884)--this Court defined the crucial terms "authors" and "writings."   In so doing, the Court made it unmistakably clear that these terms presuppose a degree of originality.

 In The Trade-Mark Cases, the Court addressed the constitutional scope of "writings."   For a particular work to be classified "under the head of writings of authors," the Court determined, "originality is required."  100 U.S., at 94.   The Court explained that originality requires independent creation plus a modicum of creativity:  "[W]hile the word writings may be liberally construed, as it has been, to include original designs for engraving, prints, &c., it is only such as are original, and are founded in the creative powers of the mind.   The writings which are to be protected are the fruits of intellectual labor, embodied in the form of books, prints, engravings, and the like."  Ibid.  (emphasis in original).

 In Burrow-Giles, the Court distilled the same requirement from the Constitution's use of the word "authors."   The Court defined "author," in a constitutional sense, to mean "he to whom anything owes its origin; originator;  maker."  111 U.S., at 58, 4 S.Ct., at 281 (internal quotation marks omitted).   As in The Trade-Mark Cases, the Court emphasized the creative component of originality.   It described copyright as being limited to "original intellectual conceptions of the author," 111 U.S., at 58, 4 S.Ct., at 281, and stressed the importance of requiring an author who accuses another of infringement to prove "the existence   of those facts of originality, of intellectual production, of thought, and conception."  Id., at 59-60, 4 S.Ct., at 281-282.

   The originality requirement articulated in The Trade-Mark Cases and  Burrow-Giles remains the touchstone of copyright protection today.      It is the very "premise of copyright law."     Leading scholars agree on this point.   As one pair of commentators succinctly puts it:  "The originality requirement is constitutionally mandated for all works." Patterson & Joyce, Monopolizing the Law:  The Scope of Copyright Protection for Law Reports and Statutory Compilations, 36 UCLA L.Rev. 719, 763, n. 155 (1989) (emphasis in original) (hereinafter Patterson & Joyce).   Accord, id., at 759-760, and n. 140;  Nimmer §  1.06[A] ("[O]riginality is a statutory as well as a constitutional requirement");  id., §  1.08[C]  ("[A] modicum of intellectual labor ... clearly constitutes an essential constitutional element").

 It is this bedrock principle of copyright that mandates the law's seemingly disparate treatment of facts and factual compilations.  "No one may claim originality as to facts."    This is because facts do not owe their origin to an act of authorship.   The distinction is one between creation and discovery:  The first person to find and report a particular fact has not created the fact;  he or she has merely discovered its existence.   To borrow from Burrow-Giles, one who discovers a fact is not its "maker" or "originator."    "The discoverer merely finds and records."    Census takers, for example, do not "create" the population figures that emerge from their efforts;  in a sense, they copy these figures   from the world around them.     Census data therefore do not trigger copyright because these data are not "original" in the constitutional sense.     The same is true of all facts--scientific, historical, biographical, and news of the day.  "[T]hey may not be copyrighted and are part of the public domain available to every person."  Miller, supra, at 1369.

    Factual compilations, on the other hand, may possess the requisite originality.   The compilation author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected data so that they may be used effectively by readers.   These choices as to selection and arrangement, so long as they are made independently by the compiler and entail a minimal degree of creativity, are sufficiently original that Congress may protect such compilations through the copyright laws.     Thus, even a directory that contains absolutely no protectible written expression, only facts, meets the constitutional minimum for copyright protection if it features an original selection or arrangement. 

* * *

   This inevitably means that the copyright in a factual compilation is thin.   Notwithstanding a valid copyright, a subsequent compiler remains free to use the facts contained in another's publication to aid in preparing a competing work, so long as the competing work does not feature the same selection and arrangement.   As one commentator explains it:  "[N]o matter how much original authorship the work displays, the facts and ideas it exposes are free for the taking....  [T]he very same facts and ideas may be divorced from the context imposed by the author, and restated or reshuffled by second comers, even if the author was the first to discover the facts or to propose the ideas."   Ginsburg 1868.

 It may seem unfair that much of the fruit of the compiler's labor may be used by others without compensation.   As Justice Brennan   has correctly observed, however, this is not "some unforeseen byproduct of a statutory scheme."    It is, rather, "the essence of copyright,", and a constitutional requirement.   The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but "[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."  Art. I, §  8, cl. 8.   To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression,   but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work.     This principle, known as the idea/expression or fact/expression dichotomy, applies to all works of authorship.   As applied to a factual compilation, assuming the absence of original written expression, only the compiler's selection and arrangement may be protected;  the raw facts may be copied at will.   This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate.   It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.

* * *

   This, then, resolves the doctrinal tension:  Copyright treats facts and factual compilations in a wholly consistent manner.   Facts, whether alone or as part of a compilation, are not original and therefore may not be copyrighted.   A factual compilation is eligible for copyright if it features an original selection or arrangement of facts, but the copyright is limited to   the particular selection or arrangement.   In no event may copyright extend to the facts themselves.

B

 As we have explained, originality is a constitutionally mandated prerequisite for copyright protection.  

* * *

   The key to the statutory definition is the second requirement.  It instructs courts that, in determining whether a fact-based work is an original work of authorship, they should focus on the manner in which the collected facts have been selected, coordinated, and arranged.   This is a straightforward application of the originality requirement.   Facts are never original, so the compilation author can claim originality, if at all, only in the way the facts are presented.   To that end, the statute dictates that the principal focus should be on whether the selection, coordination, and arrangement are sufficiently original to merit protection.

   Not every selection, coordination, or arrangement will pass muster.  This is plain from the statute.   It states that, to merit protection, the facts must be selected, coordinated, or arranged "in such a way" as to render the work as a whole original.   This implies that some "ways" will trigger copyright, but that others will not.     Otherwise, the phrase "in such a way" is meaningless and Congress should have defined "compilation" simply as "a work formed by the collection and assembly of preexisting materials or data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged." That Congress did not do so is dispositive.   In accordance with "the established principle that a court should give effect, if possible, to every clause and word of a statute," we conclude that the statute envisions that there will be some fact-based works in which the selection, coordination, and arrangement are not sufficiently original to trigger copyright protection.

   As discussed earlier, however, the originality requirement is not particularly stringent.   A compiler may settle upon a selection or arrangement that others have used;  novelty is not required.   Originality requires only that the author make the selection or arrangement independently (i.e., without copying that selection or arrangement from another work), and that it display some minimal level of creativity.   Presumably,   the vast majority of compilations will pass this test, but not all will.   There remains a narrow category of works in which the creative spark is utterly lacking or so trivial as to be virtually nonexistent.   See generally Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing Co., 188 U.S. 239, 251, 23 S.Ct. 298, 300, 47 L.Ed. 460 (1903) (referring to "the narrowest and most obvious limits").   Such works are incapable of sustaining a valid copyright.   Nimmer §  2.01[B].

 Even if a work qualifies as a copyrightable compilation, it receives only limited protection.   This is the point of §  103 of the Act.    Section 103 explains that "[t]he subject matter of copyright ... includes compilations," §  103(a), but that copyright protects only the author's original contributions--not the facts or information conveyed:

"The copyright in a compilation ... extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material."  §  103(b).

 As §  103 makes clear, copyright is not a tool by which a compilation author may keep others from using the facts or data he or she has collected. "The most important point here is one that is commonly misunderstood today: copyright ... has no effect one way or the other on the copyright or public domain status of the preexisting material."   The 1909 Act did not require, as "sweat of the brow" courts mistakenly assumed, that each subsequent compiler must start from scratch and is precluded from relying on research undertaken by another.   Rather, the facts contained in existing works may be freely copied because copyright protects only the elements that owe their origin to the compiler--the selection, coordination, and arrangement of facts.

   In summary, the 1976 revisions to the Copyright Act leave no doubt that originality, not "sweat of the brow," is the   touchstone of copyright protection in directories and other fact-based works.   Nor is there any doubt that the same was true under the 1909 Act.   The 1976 revisions were a direct response to the Copyright Office's concern that many lower courts had misconstrued this basic principle, and Congress emphasized repeatedly that the purpose of the revisions was to clarify, not change, existing law.   The revisions explain with painstaking clarity that copyright requires originality, §  102(a);  that facts are never original, §  102(b);  that the copyright in a compilation does not extend to the facts it contains, §  103(b);  and that a compilation is copyrightable only to the extent that it features an original selection, coordination, or arrangement, §  101.

* * *

III

   There is no doubt that Feist took from the white pages of Rural's directory a substantial amount of factual information.   At a minimum, Feist copied the names,   towns, and telephone numbers of 1,309 of Rural's subscribers.   Not all copying, however, is copyright infringement.   To establish infringement, two elements must be proven:  (1) ownership of a valid copyright, and (2) copying of constituent elements of the work that are original.      The first element is not at issue here;  Feist appears to concede that Rural's directory, considered as a whole, is subject to a valid copyright because it contains some foreword text, as well as original material in its yellow pages advertisements.   See Brief for Petitioner 18;  Pet. for Cert. 9.

   The question is whether Rural has proved the second element.  In other words, did Feist, by taking 1,309 names, towns, and telephone numbers from Rural's white pages, copy anything that was "original" to Rural? Certainly, the raw data does not satisfy the originality requirement.   Rural may have been the first to discover and report the names, towns, and telephone numbers of its subscribers, but this data does not " 'ow[e] its origin' " to Rural.     Rather, these bits of information are uncopyrightable facts;  they existed before Rural reported them and would have continued to exist if Rural had never published a telephone directory.   The originality requirement "rule[s] out protecting ... names, addresses, and telephone numbers of which the plaintiff by no stretch of the imagination could be called the author."   Patterson & Joyce 776.

 Rural essentially concedes the point by referring to the names, towns, and telephone numbers as "preexisting material."   Brief for Respondent 17. Section 103(b) states explicitly   that the copyright in a compilation does not extend to "the preexisting material employed in the work."

    The question that remains is whether Rural selected, coordinated, or arranged these uncopyrightable facts in an original way.   As mentioned, originality is not a stringent standard;  it does not require that facts be presented in an innovative or surprising way.   It is equally true, however, that the selection and arrangement of facts cannot be so mechanical or routine as to require no creativity whatsoever.   The standard of originality is low, but it does exist.   See Patterson & Joyce 760, n. 144 ("While this requirement is sometimes characterized as modest, or a low threshold, it is not without effect") (internal quotation marks omitted;  citations omitted).   As this Court has explained, the Constitution mandates some minimal degree of creativity,  and an author who claims infringement must prove "the existence of ... intellectual production, of thought, and conception."

 The selection, coordination, and arrangement of Rural's white pages do not satisfy the minimum constitutional standards for copyright protection.   As mentioned at the outset, Rural's white pages are entirely typical.   Persons desiring telephone service in Rural's service area fill out an application and Rural issues them a telephone number.   In preparing its white pages, Rural simply takes the data provided by its subscribers and lists it alphabetically by surname.   The end product is a garden-variety white pages directory, devoid of even the slightest trace of creativity.

 Rural's selection of listings could not be more obvious:  It publishes the most basic information--name, town, and telephone number--about each person who applies to it for telephone service.   This is "selection" of a sort, but it lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression.   Rural expended sufficient effort   to make the white pages directory useful, but insufficient creativity to make it original.

 We note in passing that the selection featured in Rural's white pages may also fail the originality requirement for another reason.   Feist points out that Rural did not truly "select" to publish the names and telephone numbers of its subscribers;  rather, it was   required to do so by the Kansas Corporation Commission as part of its monopoly franchise.   See 737 F.Supp., at 612.   Accordingly, one could plausibly conclude that this selection was dictated by state law, not by Rural.

   Nor can Rural claim originality in its coordination and arrangement of facts.   The white pages do nothing more than list Rural's subscribers in alphabetical order.   This arrangement may, technically speaking, owe its origin to Rural;  no one disputes that Rural undertook the task of alphabetizing the names itself.   But there is nothing remotely creative about arranging names alphabetically in a white pages directory.   It is an age-old practice, firmly rooted in tradition and so commonplace that it has come to be expected as a matter of course.   See Brief for Information Industry Association et al. as Amici Curiae 10 (alphabetical arrangement "is universally observed in directories published by local exchange telephone companies").   It is not only unoriginal, it is practically inevitable.   This time-honored tradition does not possess the minimal creative spark required by the Copyright Act and the Constitution.

 We conclude that the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist were not original to Rural and therefore were not protected by the copyright in Rural's combined white and yellow pages directory.   As a constitutional matter, copyright protects only those constituent elements of a work that possess more than a de minimis quantum of creativity.   Rural's white pages, limited to basic subscriber information and arranged alphabetically, fall short of the mark.   As a statutory matter, 17 U.S.C. §  101 does not afford protection   from copying to a collection of facts that are selected, coordinated, and arranged in a way that utterly lacks originality.   Given that some works must fail, we cannot imagine a more likely candidate.   Indeed, were we to hold that Rural's white pages pass muster, it is hard to believe that any collection of facts could fail.

 Because Rural's white pages lack the requisite originality, Feist's use of the listings cannot constitute infringement.   This decision should not be construed as demeaning Rural's efforts in compiling its directory, but rather as making clear that copyright rewards originality, not effort.   As this Court noted more than a century ago, " 'great praise may be due to the plaintiffs for their industry and enterprise in publishing this paper, yet the law does not contemplate their being rewarded in this way.' "

 The judgment of the Court of Appeals is

 Reversed.