The sweat-of-the-brow case _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service)
is actually a rather specific and technical exception to the general rule of "minimal spark of creativity".
This was a telephone book, which one company took, and *did not copy* the pages, they copied the *content* of those pages, and then inserted that content into a broader database of similar content i.e. the listings for all of Kansas, instead of just the one town.
The ruling, writen I think by O'Connor was fairly narrow and not as extreme as some are implying.
The ruling did *not* repeal sweat-of-the-brow. What it did was state that your work must have some creativity, some originality, some non-obvious content in order to enjoy copyright protection.
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