"I. Fred Koenigsberg - Copyright Primer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koenigsberg I Fred)

The Idea/Expression Dichotomy

Copyright protects the expression of ideas, but not ideas themselves. Thus,
copyright will not protect any procedure, process, system, method of operation,
concept, principle or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is
described, explained, illustrated or embodied [FN7]. From this principle many
others are derived:

- Copyright does not extend to titles, phrases, or, as a general rule,
forms. Such items do not have the requisite originality of expression to
distinguish them from the ideas they represent.

- Copyright does not extend to facts or news, but only to the particular
form of expression of those facts. Thus, for example, the fact that a
particular chemical causes a *346 particular reaction may not be protected
by copyright. But the text of an article describing that reaction and
describing the experimental procedure to elicit it will be protectable, for
those textual descriptions will constitute the expression of the fact, and
not the fact itself. That copyright protection will not prevent anyone from
recreating the experiment, but only from copying the article about it.

- Similarly, copyright does not protect research. As the Supreme Court has
said, copyright protects creativity, not effort, no matter now significant
that effort is [FN4].

- There are circumstances where the idea and expression are not
distinguishable. It has been held, for example, that such "merger" of idea
and expression occurred in a jewelry pin made in the exact form of a
honeybee, or in simple sweepstakes rules. There was no other way (or only a
very limited number of ways) to depict a bee in gold, or to express those
contest rules. In such cases, copyright will not protect the work, for that
would protect not only the expression, but the idea itself.


Utilitarian Works

Utilitarian works may be copyrightable, but only to the extent that they contain
copyrightable subject matter [FN8]. The copyrightable subject matter must be
physically or conceptually separable from the purely utilitarian object. Thus,
for example, a common straight-backed chair will not be copyrightable, for there
is nothing about it that is physically or conceptually separable from its
"chair-ness," its purely utilitarian function. But if that chair contains a
carved lion's head on its back, the lion's head is physically or conceptually
separable and, therefore, copyrightable.


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