Well, the case you are thinking of is surely Bridgeman
v. Corel. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_v._Corel) or something that affirms
it (like the recent Meshwerks v. Toyota).
I understand that at the moment Wikipedia has a rather complicated
determination of whether they use it or not.
Most of the legal question revolves around whether there is a lot of
creativity in doing a reproduction. There are arguments on either side of
things. Still, I think in the case of Corbis, the fact that at most they are
just putting a photo onto a flat-bed scanner, maybe applying "auto-contrast"
to the results (or doing some other sort of color syncing), ought to
preclude the idea that they are doing anything "creative" in such cases.
(One thing that has long annoyed me in the discussions about Bridgeman is
that the question is always posed as whether or not the adjustments were
creative enough to generate a new copyright. In my mind this ignores the
question of whether they are creative enough to generate a new copyright
_and thus give the modifier monopoly control over the previous public domain
material_. Moving things from the public to the private domain is a
dangerous game and should only be reserved for truly substantial and
worthwhile efforts to rehabilitate something that would otherwise be fairly
useless -- massive restorations of crumbling things that require an amount
of artistry on par with that which created the restored object in question
-- and not just tweaking the reds and greens a bit, removing a scratch here
or there with the clone tool. In my opinion. But I am neither a lawyer nor a
judge.)
The law in this regard has more to do with whether the work is
"original" rather than "creative". The distinction may seem somewhat
hair-splitting, but that's what law suits are about.
Ec