[Foundation-l] Issues about Copyright

[Robert Rohde]

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 6:01 AM, Jimmy Xu<xu.jimmy.wrk at gmail.com> wrote:
> So that is, due to P.R. of China Copyright Law, text that published in
> newspapers, periodicals, radio and TV stations and other media
> reported the news of the simple fact are not copyrighted. But I cannot
> find these exception in US Copyright Law. Maybe it's only because my
> English is not so good and I didn't caught it, maybe it's a possible
> conflict. And if so, can we use these text published in P.R. of China
> in Wikipedia as if they were in PD?
>
> And, the image now has no problem at all, everything causes by the text.

Simple facts are not eligible for US copyright.  Only creative
expression is protected under US case law.  One of the more important
Supreme Court cases dealing with this is:

[[Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service]]

-Robert Rohde