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More Good News: Court Rules Computer Models Not Copyrightable?

By Brian C. Ledbetter · Wednesday, June 18. 2008 07:37
That's the word from my #1 source for copyright news, anyway. Hopefully quoting with permission, paragraph breaks added by me:

In a decision entered today in Meshwerks, Inc. v. Toyotal Motor Sales, Inc., No. 06-422 (10th Cir. June 17, 2008)(pdf), the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an order granting summary judgment and dismissing the copyright infringement case brought against Toyota by Meshwerks, which had created digital models of Toyota cars for use in Toyota's advertising.

As the court explained, "[t]hese digital models have substantial advantages over the product photographs for which they substitute. With a few clicks of a computer mouse,the advertiser can change the color of the car, its surroundings, and even edit its physical dimensions to portray changes in vehicle styling; before this innovation, advertisers had to conduct new photo shoots of whole fleets of vehicles each time the manufacturer made even a small design change to a car or truck."

Professor Patry strongly criticized the lower court's decision and will no doubt be unpersuaded by the 10th Circuit's affirmance. The court concluded, however, that the digital models did not have a sufficient degree of creativity to entitle them to copyright protection...


All of the software engineers that worked so hard to make the models as incredibly true-to-life as they are will most likely be extremely disappointed by this offer.

Of course, we all know what happens when software engineers get angry:

-cheep cheep-


Incidentally, does my insertion of paragraph breaks into the above text cause enough of a "individualizing feature" to transfer the Copyright on PB Friedman's text to me?

;-)

Hint: While the model looks on the surface like a simple "unadorned" Toyota, there are a lot of rather serious mathematical formulas that go into creating it.

Of course, the concept of "mathematics" being largely a mystery to our judiciary and press, I guess a ruling like this (and the resulting crickets) is inevitable.

On an unrelated note: I totally laughed at this.
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Here is what a handful of random people think about this article. But first, the fine print:
The opinions expressed here, even where approved for display, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this website, the management, or any other entity or organization, with the exception of the Vast Zionist Conspiracy. Those opinions we represent in style, yo. Please keep the language in these comments clean, as this is intended to be a family-friendly, work-friendly website. Comments not compliant with this policy will be edited for content where necessary. Abusive or otherwise illegal comments will be reported to the proper authorities, up to and including the aforementioned Vast Zionist Conspiracy. The Management cannot and will not be held responsible for commenters making a spectacle of themselves, even if The Management are the said commenters in question. In other words, don't take yourself so seriously, folks. We're all here to discuss the news, and more importantly, to have fun. Now go get yourself into some OCD treatment program—you obviously need it if you actually read all of this mess.

captainfish on 2008-06-18 22:24 #1
*I'm sorry, but if a song that is broadcasted out to the public can be copyrighted and prevented from being recorded, then a computer program that creates models of cars is also copyrighted. Just ask Microsoft what is copyrightable.


"We and many others criticized a law firm in October for taking the position that its cease and desist letters, also known as nastygrams, were copyrighted and thus could not be posted intact on the web by its targets."

HHAHAHAHHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAAHAHAHAAA
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peter on 2008-06-27 18:05 #2
*You've always got permission to quote me.

And the long and the short of the court ruling that computer models are not copyrightable is that in order to have copyright protection a work has to have a certain minimum of creativity; the product of work alone, no matter how extensive, cannot be copyrighted. The landmark case is *Feist v. Rural Communications*, 499 U.S. 340, http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm, in which the Supreme Court held that a telephone book was not entitled to copyright protection. The creators of the telephone book in Feist had gone to quite a bit of work to collect the names, addresses, and telephone numbers to create their telephone book, and the defendant simply copied the book and started selling it as their own. It was no infringement.
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