I just got curious and read up on Bridgeman vs. Corel. To my complete surprise, though heard in the US, it cites UK precedent (Privy Council, House of Lords) in forming its opinion -- it is /not/ purely a case based upon US law.
It turns out the case was heard under UK law (!). It cites as authorities a Privy Council case ruled by the UK Law Lords, *Interlego v Tyco Industries*(on which we have an article):
"Take the simplest case of artistic copyright, a painting or a photograph. It takes great skill, judgement and labour to produce a good copy by painting or to produce an enlarged photograph from a positive print, but no-one would reasonably contend that the copy, painting, or enlargement was an "original" artistic work in which the copier is entitled to claim copyright. Skill, labour or judgement merely in the process of copying cannot confer originality."
"Lord Oliver held that in order to afford copyright protection on a copy of a work, "[t]here must in addition be some element of material alteration or embellishment which suffices to make the totality of the work an original work". He stated that such an alteration or embellishment must be "visually significant", and that it is insufficient simply for the alteration to convey "information". Thus the court held that the modifications that Interlego had made to its designs did not constitute an original work, and thus were not affored copyright protection. Although they may have involved skill, labour, and judgement, that skill, labour, and judgement lay solely in the process of copying."
Full ruling here http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKPC/1988/3.html. it also cites the UK House of Lords in a prior case, with a remarkably apposite quote:
"By attributing new periods of copyright protection to every minor alteration in the form of a brick which is recorded in, such a drawing they seek to obtain, effectively, a perpetual monopoly. In *Re Coca-Cola Go's Applications [1986] 2 All E.R. 274*, at 275, the House of Lords drew: attention to the undesirable practice of seeking to expand the boundaries of intellectual property rights beyond the purposes for which they were created in order to obtain an unintended and undeserving monopoly."
"To accord an independent artistic copyright to every such reproduction would be to enable the period of artistic copyright in what is, essentially, the same work to be extended indefinitely. Thus the primary question on Tyco's appeal can be expressed in this way: can Lego, having enjoyed a monopoly for the full permitted period of patent and design protection in reliance upon drawings in which no copyright any longer subsists, continue their monopoly for yet a further, more extensive period by re-drawing the same designs with a number of minor alterations and claiming a fresh copyright in the re-drawn designs?"
Given that Bridgeman has been cited as a purely US based precedent, this could be quite a major change in my understanding of the legal position :)
FT2