Originality, not sweat of the brow, is required for a work to obtain copyright protection. Decided March 27, 1991 (argued January 9, 1991). Opinion of the Court: Sandra Day O'Connor → go there Topic: Copyright/Patents. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States establishing that information alone without a minimum of original creativity cannot be protected by copyright. In the case appealed, Feist had copied information from Rural's telephone listings to include in its own, after Rural had refused to license the information. Rural sued for copyright infringement. The Court ruled that information contained in Rural's phone directory was not copyrightable and that therefore no infringement existed. Wiki link