Compendium of U.S. Copyright Practices, 3rd Edition

Search
Filters
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Chapter 100
Chapter 200
Chapter 300
Chapter 400
Chapter 500
Chapter 600
Chapter 700
Chapter 800
Chapter 900
Chapter 1000
Chapter 1100
Chapter 1200
Chapter 1300
Chapter 1400
Chapter 1500
Chapter 1600
Chapter 1700
Chapter 1800
Chapter 1900
Chapter 2000
Chapter 2100
Chapter 2200
Chapter 2300
Chapter 2400

308 The Originality Requirement

308 The Originality Requirement


Originality is “the bedrock principle of copyright” and “the very premise of copyright law.” Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc., 499 U.S. 340, 347 (1991) (citation omitted).


“To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author,” which means that the work must be “independently created by the author” and it must possess “at least some minimal degree of creativity.” Id. at 345 (citations omitted).


These requirements are discussed in Sections 308.1 and 308.2 below.

[convertkit form=2550354]