The 1991 Supreme Court copyright case, Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, served as the basis for quite a bit of the discussion at an intellectual property summit held Friday by the Software and Information Industry Association.
At issue was whether Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued Feist and the high court ruled that information in Rural's white pages was not copyrightable.
In all of the intellectual property policy roundtables that I've covered in recent memory, Feist has never come up. It may be acknowledged as a precedent-setter by those "in the know," but references to the ruling have obviously waned.
When someone mentions Feist these days, folks may think of Canadian crooner Leslie Feist whose tune "1234" is featured in the new Apple iPod ads. Her creative, colorful video is posted above.
Read more about the SIIA event in Technology Daily's PM Edition.
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