[3] Under the U.S. law, which protects the human creativity expressed in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of the material, the copyright office gives the following examples of compilations in which copyright might exist, as each represents compilations that reflect human creativity in preparation:[1] A critical case to the application of copyright in compilation in U.S. law is Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), in which the Supreme Court clarified the role of creativity in protection.
The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed.
Prior to this case, some U.S. courts were following the sweat-of-the-brow doctrine, which gave copyright to anyone who invested significant amount of time and energy into their work.
That includes not only the author's own comments, but also his choice of which facts to cover, his choice of which links to make among the bits of information, his order of presentation (unless it is something obvious like an alphabetical list), any evaluations he may have made about the quality of various pieces of information, or anything else that might be considered "original creative work" of the author rather than mere facts.
Shortly after the Feist decision, the European Union began working to create a unified approach to copyright in compilation for databases.
Under Article 3 of the Directive, databases which, "by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents, constitute the author's own intellectual creation" are protected by copyright as collections: no other criterion may be used by Member States.