Can we use data assembled in a copyrighted book?

Divining what is entitled to copyright protection

A friend approached me with a business idea that involves using someone else's idea and changing the format, although most of the information will remain the same (general information such as company names and phone numbers). If we change the marketing format including the "how to" section with our own ideas, but have a list of contacts similar to those that are already under copyright because you can't change a company's name and phone number, will we be charged with copyright infringement?

You will get your best answer from a famous case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991. In that case, the Court allowed a company to copy a local telephone book prepared by another company on the ground that facts are not subject to copyright protection and collections of facts aren't subject to copyright violations unless there is creativity involved in how the facts are arranged.

In the case, which involved a feisty publisher dubbed Feist Publications and a certain Rural Telephone Service Company operating out of Kansas, the Court ruled that merely arranging names alphabetically didn't involve adequate creativity to extend protection to the phone book as a "collection of facts."

It will do you well to read the Feist case. Go to Findlaw (www.findlaw.com), click on the link to the Supreme Court cases, and enter "Feist" in the search box, and voila, you'll see the case.

If the list of contacts has been amassed according to criteria that give that particular list some value -- in other words, creativity in compiling the list -- you may be subject to a charge of copyright infringement by copying the list verbatim. Better to pick and choose entries and arrange them in your own unique way. Facts are not protected, but collections of facts may be.