Pursuant to state regulation, the Rural Telephone Company Inc. publishes a "white pages" telephone directory that lists telephone subscribers alphabetically and their corresponding telephone numbers for a certain geographical area of service. In order to produce a similar "white pages" directory for a much larger geographical area that included the service area in question, the Feist Publication Company extracted the names and numbers it needed from the Rural Telephone Company's white pages without Rural's consent. Although Feist altered many of the listings it obtained, several were identical to those listed in Rural's white pages. Rural sued Feist for copyright infringement.

In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Rural's white pages were not entitled to copyright, and thus that Feist was not liable for infringement. The basis for this ruling was that the selection, coordination, and arrangement of Rural's white pages did not satisfy the minimum constitutional standards for copyright protection, since Rural had only to obtain data from its subscribers and list them alphabetically, resulting in a "garden-variety" white pages directory devoid of even the slightest trace of creativity (which copyright law is intended to protect).

SOURCE: Feist Publications Inc. v. Rural Telephone Co. Inc., 111 S. Ct. 1282 (1991).