Sweat of the Brow Doctrine

IPR Intellectual Property Rights

Compilations and the sweat of the brow doctrine

§ 103 of the Copyright Act allows for the protection of "compilations," provided there is a "creative" or "original" act involved in such a compilation, such as in the selection (deciding which things to include or exclude), and arrangement (how they are shown and in what order).

The protection is limited only to the selection and arrangement, not to the facts themselves, which may be freely copied.

Facts are considered synonymous to "ideas" or "discoveries" under this law and are not copyrightable. By extension, a compilation of uncopyrightable facts is also uncopyrightable.

The Supreme Court decision in Feist v. Rural further made clear the requirements that a compilation be original in its composition, in denying protection to telephone "white pages".

The Feist court rejected what was known as the "sweat of the brow" doctrine, in ruling that no matter how much work was necessary to create a compilation, a non-selective collection of facts ordered in a non-creative way is not subject to copyright protection.