499 U.S. 340, 349-350 (1991)
Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., is a certified public utility that provides telephone service to several communities in northwest Kansas.1 As a condition of its monopoly franchise, state regulation requires Rural to issue an updated telephone directory annually.2 Rural's directory consists of white pages listing subscribers' names, towns, and telephone numbers in alphabetical order, along with yellow pages featuring classified advertisements.3
Feist Publications, Inc., specializes in area-wide telephone directories covering larger geographical ranges than typical local directories.4 Feist's 1983 directory encompasses eleven telephone service areas in fifteen counties and contains 46,878 white pages listings.5 To compile its directory, Feist approached each of the eleven telephone companies operating in northwest Kansas and offered to pay for the right to use their white pages listings.6
Of the eleven companies, only Rural refused to license its listings.7 Feist then copied 1,309 listings from Rural's 1982-1983 white pages after first removing several thousand outside its geographic range and verifying the remaining data through additional investigation that added street addresses to many entries.8 Four of the copied listings were fictitious entries that Rural had inserted to detect copying.9
Rural sued Feist for copyright infringement in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas.10 The district court granted summary judgment to Rural.11 The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed in an unpublished opinion.12 The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review whether the copyright in Rural's directory protects the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist.
Whether the names, towns, and telephone numbers copied from Rural's white pages are protected by the copyright in its directory?13
No. Rural obtained the names, towns, and telephone numbers from subscriber applications as part of its monopoly franchise.17 Rural merely listed them without any original contribution.18 These are uncopyrightable facts that existed independently of the directory.19 Feist copied 1,309 such listings after verifying data and adding street addresses.20 These copied elements were preexisting facts rather than original expression created by Rural.21
The names, towns, and telephone numbers copied by Feist are not protected by the copyright in Rural's directory.22
Whether the selection, coordination, and arrangement of subscriber information in Rural's white pages satisfies the originality requirement for copyright protection?23
A factual compilation qualifies for copyright protection only if its selection, coordination, or arrangement is original.24 This means it must be independently created by the author with at least a minimal degree of creativity.25 Alphabetical ordering of basic subscriber data is mechanical, routine, and practically inevitable.26 It falls short of this constitutional and statutory threshold.
No. Rural's white pages simply take subscriber data provided in applications.27 They arrange it alphabetically by surname.28 There is no creative selection beyond the most obvious basic information.29 The result is a garden-variety directory that displays no intellectual production or thought.30
This arrangement follows an age-old practice that is expected as a matter of course.31 It is dictated in part by state regulation.32 The arrangement lacks the modicum of creativity required under the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Constitution.33
The selection, coordination, and arrangement of subscriber information in Rural's white pages does not satisfy the originality requirement for copyright protection.34
Related opinions on this issue
Justice Blackmun concurs in the judgment.35