So, the Office says that it would register “a claim in an
original compilation of the names of the author’s 50 favorite restaurants. While neither a restaurant nor the name of a
restaurant may be protected by copyright, a list of 50 restaurant names may
constitute a literary work – a category of work specified in section 102(a) –
based on the author’s original selection and/or arrangement of the author’s fifty
favorite restaurants.” By contrast, a “mere
compilation of physical movements does not rise to the level of choreographic
authorship unless it contains sufficient attributes of a work of choreography.…
[T]he mere selection and arrangement of physical movements does not in itself
support a claim of choreographic authorship.… Choreographic authorship is
considered, for copyright purposes, to be the composition and arrangement of a
related series of dance movements and patterns organized into an integrated,
coherent, and expressive whole.” But
what makes an integrated, coherent, and expressive whole? A list of 50 chosen restaurants apparently is
automatically that (or doesn’t have to be that because the medium of
transmission is words, which amounts to the same thing), whereas “[s]imple
dance routines” aren’t.
Friday, June 22, 2012
murder on the dancefloor, but not copyrightability
The Copyright Office issued an interesting policy statement
on registration of certain compilations, stating the Office’s position that
things like collections of dance moves or exercise moves would be
unregistrable. 37 CFR Part 201, [DocketNo. 2012-6], Registration of Claims to Copyright. What struck me is what seems to be so natural
as to be unnoticeable: the difference in mediums that leads us to see
copyrightable creativity easily in some, less easily in others. Because the
standard for originality is so low, we usually aren’t confronted with these
distinctions, but we can’t avoid them entirely.
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