Compilations, Collections, and Derivative Works
Copyright extends not only to newly created works but also to preexisting works that have been compiled or collected in some unique fashion and to new versions of old works.
Compilations and Collective Works
Authors often select preexisting materials and then combine them in a unique manner. Thus, an author might create an almanac of information containing birth and death dates of famous people, lists of award-winning novels, and tables relating to employment statistics. Although these elements in themselves are not copyrightable because they are facts, the author's selection and arrangement of them into a unique product qualifies for copyright protection as a compilation. Likewise, although recipes themselves are not copyrightable, a unique arrangement of them into a recipe book may qualify as a protectable compilation.
Not every compilation of otherwise uncopyrightable facts or common material qualifies for protection. For example, in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Svc. Co., the Supreme Court stated that a directory of telephone white pages was not copyrightable. Its alphabetical arrangement of names and phone numbers did not reflect sufficient creativity because listing names, phone numbers, and towns in alphabetical order is a common practice.
Included in the definition of compilation is collective works. A collection is a work such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia in which a number of contributions, each of which is a separate work, are assembled into a collective whole. Thus, if an author decides to create a book collecting the ten best American short stories of 2000 or a CD assembling Academy Award–winning movie theme songs, the resulting arrangement is protected under copyright law as a collection. The author or collector must obtain permission from the author of each short story or song to include it in the collection. The unique resulting arrangement of previously copyrighted works is itself copyrightable by the new author as a collection because original authorship is involved in deciding which items to include and the manner of their arrangement.
Derivative Works
A derivative work is one based on a preexisting work. Thus, sequels, fictionalizations, translations, or other works that recast or transform a preexisting work qualify for protection as derivative works. The authors of the underlying original work and the derivative work may be different. For example, an expert psychiatrist may add a foreword to a previously published book about Dr. Sigmund Freud. The original author of the book continues to own all rights in the underlying book, and the psychiatrist owns rights to the foreword created by her. In other instances, the authors may be the same, as is the case when a programmer creates a computer program and then later creates a new version of it. Both the original work and the later derivative work are the product of the same author, and each work is separately copyrightable.
To be copyrightable, the derivative work must be different enough from the original to be regarded as a new work and must contain a substantial amount of new material. Making minor changes or additions of little substance to a preexisting work does not qualify the work as a new version for copyright purposes.
Following are some examples of derivative works:
Television movie of the week based on a novel
The movie Chorus Line, based on the earlier play
An English translation of a novel originally written in Swedish
The copyright in the derivative work covers only the additions, changes, or other new material appearing for the first time in the work. It does not extend to any preexisting material and does not imply a copyright in that material. Consequently, only the owner of a copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. Thus, after you see the movie The Matrix, you cannot create a sequel based on the movie. Only its author can create the sequel or give consent to another to do so.