What Constitutes "Original" Work (in books)?

[Hooman]

I noticed this today, as I was reading one of my business textbooks. At the end of the chapter there were roughly 40-50 citations and works cited. The whole chapter was around 10-12 pages.

It led me to wonder what really constitutes original work? So basically these "authors" put together or compiled these bits from various pre-existing works and through the publishing company sold it to us as a textbook. What value did they add to the pre-existing works other than putting it all together? I'm sure they're not the only textbook with the same or similar content, or similar works compiled.

What is truly original work? How often does a book come out that is truly original and introduces a new idea or expands our knowledge. I would argue that it's not often. Think about all the money-making books that have basically copied and reworded Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. A lot of books seems like a re-hash of old books.

How similar do the content of books/publications need to be to constitute copyright violations. Sometimes I'm very surprised to read books that seem like they basically copied another book...like what the?

Seldom do I read something that is really fresh, original and more than 50% new material. It's a rare thing these days. Why new textbooks keep coming out every quarter/semester...it's for the profit of the publishing companies. Not that I mind, they can do whatever they want, but I'm questioning whether we are making much progress in publishing new content, or are we generally publishing the same stuff over and over?

I don't think there's any answer to this, but I was just wondering what your thoughts are. (and hey, just helping the forum to grow )

[akula]

ok...very interesting question and a very important one

one of the requirements for claiming copyright (whether in a book, or a song, or software code, or site content) is "originality"...but if the majority of the book's content (or software source code, or site content) comprises of 3rd party data, where is the "originality" and hence where is the copyright?

this issue is broadly termed as the "threshold for originality" and the question of "what is original?" has pretty much been settled in cases such as feist v rural

in feist, a telephone directory publisher basically compiled a bunch of numbers into a book, and then claimed copyright to prevent fesit from copying the contents of the phone book. feist argued that the contents of the directory were not "original" and so, the supreme court had to extensively evaluate the meaning of that word

i'll leave it to you to see what the court said

I noticed this today, as I was reading one of my business textbooks. At the end of the chapter there were roughly 40-50 citations and works cited. The whole chapter was around 10-12 pages.

It led me to wonder what really constitutes original work? So basically these "authors" put together or compiled these bits from various pre-existing works and through the publishing company sold it to us as a textbook. What value did they add to the pre-existing works other than putting it all together? I'm sure they're not the only textbook with the same or similar content, or similar works compiled.

What is truly original work? How often does a book come out that is truly original and introduces a new idea or expands our knowledge. I would argue that it's not often. Think about all the money-making books that have basically copied and reworded Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. A lot of books seems like a re-hash of old books.

How similar do the content of books/publications need to be to constitute copyright violations. Sometimes I'm very surprised to read books that seem like they basically copied another book...like what the?

Seldom do I read something that is really fresh, original and more than 50% new material. It's a rare thing these days. Why new textbooks keep coming out every quarter/semester...it's for the profit of the publishing companies. Not that I mind, they can do whatever they want, but I'm questioning whether we are making much progress in publishing new content, or are we generally publishing the same stuff over and over?

I don't think there's any answer to this, but I was just wondering what your thoughts are. (and hey, just helping the forum to grow )

[Hooman]

one of the requirements for claiming copyright (whether in a book, or a song, or software code, or site content) is "originality"...but if the majority of the book's content (or software source code, or site content) comprises of 3rd party data, where is the "originality" and hence where is the copyright?

this issue is broadly termed as the "threshold for originality" and the question of "what is original?" has pretty much been settled in cases such as feist v rural

in feist, a telephone directory publisher basically compiled a bunch of numbers into a book, and then claimed copyright to prevent fesit from copying the contents of the phone book. feist argued that the contents of the directory were not "original" and so, the supreme court had to extensively evaluate the meaning of that word

i'll leave it to you to see what the court said

Hmm, I wasn't sure how to search for it, but it helps to know that they refer to it as "threshold of originality"...thanks, I'll be reading those links and more into it now.

[akula]

i'm the lean mean case spitting machine!!

[Hooman]

i'm the lean mean case spitting machine!!

Lol. So where did you learn this stuff...just random searching, school/studies, work...?

[akula]

we do this stuff law school

it's fun...though, sometimes it does get irritating

[vishenda]

I like this discussion, thanks guys

[SlvrBulletV6]

Here is the site by the USPTO to learn more about Copyrights.
U.S. Copyright Office

[BusinessAdviser]

ok...very interesting question and a very important one

one of the requirements for claiming copyright (whether in a book, or a song, or software code, or site content) is "originality"...but if the majority of the book's content (or software source code, or site content) comprises of 3rd party data, where is the "originality" and hence where is the copyright?

this issue is broadly termed as the "threshold for originality" and the question of "what is original?" has pretty much been settled in cases such as feist v rural

in feist, a telephone directory publisher basically compiled a bunch of numbers into a book, and then claimed copyright to prevent fesit from copying the contents of the phone book. feist argued that the contents of the directory were not "original" and so, the supreme court had to extensively evaluate the meaning of that word

i'll leave it to you to see what the court said

The case actually stands for a slightly different proposition. The Court in Feist made a couple of holdings. First, the Court held that the standard for copyrightability is a "minimal degree of originality." However, this is not why the Court found for the party that it did. In short, the Court held that facts, such as one's telephone number and address, are not copyrightable. Then the Court got into whether the alphabetical collection of these facts constituted the minimal degree of originality. Because it did not, the phone book was deemed to be non-copyrightable.

You raised enough questions in the original posting to keep a Copyright Law class busy for an entire semester: Minimal standards, collections of works, fair use, etc. If you care to break them down, I could try to address them. But today's class has ended for now. Good luck.