User:Asianflavoure/sandbox

Legal Action

Fictitious entries may be used to demonstrate copying, but to prove legal infringement, the material must also be shown to be eligible for copyright. However, due to the Feist v. Rural, Fred Worth lawsuit where the Supreme Court ruled that "information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright", there are very few cases where copyright has been proven. Many of these cases that go to court are dismissed and the affected party is rewarded no compensation.

• Fred L. Worth, author of The Trivia Encyclopedia, filed a $300 million lawsuit against the distributors of Trivial Pursuit. He claimed that more than a quarter of the questions in the game's Genus Edition had been taken from his books, even his own fictitious entries that he had added to the books to catch anyone who wanted to violate his copyright. However, the case was thrown out by the district court judge as the Trivial Pursuit inventors argued that facts are not protected by copyright.
• In Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co. a New York Corporation that published and sold a New York City taxi driver's guide entitled Official New York Taxi Driver's Guide, attempted to sue Hagstrom Map Corporation who published and sold New York City Taxi & Limousine Drivers Guide, that Hagstrom allegedly violated the Copyright Act of 1976 for permanent injunction of their guide, damages, and attorney fees. However, this case was dismissed by the United States Federal Court because it found that fictitious entries (in this case, a "trap street") are not themselves protected by copyright.
• In Alexandria Drafting Co. v. Andrew H. Amsterdam dba Franklin Maps, Alexandria Drafting Corporation filed suit against Franklin Maps alleging that Franklin Maps had violated the Copyright Act of 1976 by copying their map books. However, this case was dismissed although the judge cited that there was a single instance of original copyright, but this was not sufficient evidence to support copyright infringement. Additionally the judge cited Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co. as previous case law to support that "fictitious names may not be copyrighted" and "the existence, or non-existence, of a road is a non-copyrightable fact."
• In one particular case, in 2001 The Automobile Association in the United Kingdom agreed to settle a case for £20,000,000 when it was caught copying Ordnance Survey maps. However, in this copyright infringement case there was no instance of a purposeful copyright trap. Instead, the prosecution sued for specific stylistic choices, such as the width and style of the roads.