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Phone books are copyright protected, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....

"In regard to collections of facts, O'Connor wrote that copyright can apply only to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc.—not to the information itself."

Here, the weights are also not even facts.




That case ruled the phone book in question was not copyright protected:

> The court held that Rural's directory was nothing more than an alphabetic list of all subscribers to its service, which it was required to compile under law, and that no creative expression was involved. That Rural spent considerable time and money collecting the data was irrelevant to copyright law, and Rural's copyright claim was dismissed.

In theory a curated phone book could be copyrighted, e.g. a hypothetical "Best Restaurants in San Francisco" compilation could be copyrighted. However a general phonebook just listing business in alphabetical order does not meet the originality threshold that was laid out in Feist v. Rural.


No, the court ruled that certain elements of a phonebook are copyright protected. I even quoted the exact passage.




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