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Originally Posted by HarryT
Copyright law does differ from country to country in this area. UK copyright law, for example, states that if you've expended a non-trivial amount of effort making copies of works that are in the public domain, then you hold a copyright of those specific copies that you've created (eg if you've scanned a book, nobody can copy those scans without your permssion). I understand that US copyright law has no such provision.
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Do you have an example case for that?
Interlego AG v. Tyco Industries [1989] 1 AC 217 says the opposite.
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Take the simplest case of artistic copyright, a painting or a photograph. It takes great skill, judgment and labour to produce a good copy by painting or to produce an enlarged photograph from a positive print, but no one would reasonably contend that the copy painting or enlargement was an "original" artistic work in which the copier is entitled to claim copyright. Skill, labour or judgment merely in the process of copying cannot confer originality. In this connection some reliance was placed on a passage from the judgment of Whitford J. in L.B. (Plastics) Limited v. Swish Products Limited (supra) Cat pages 568-569) where he expressed the opinion that a drawing of a three dimensional prototype, not itself produced from the drawing and not being a work of artistic craftsmanship, would qualify as an original work. That may well be right, for there is no more reason for denying originality to the depiction of a three dimensional prototype than there is for denying originality to the depiction in two dimensional form of any other physical object. It by no means follows, however, that that which is an exact and literal reproduction in two dimensional form of an existing two dimensional work becomes an original work simply because the process of copying it involves the application of skill and labour. There must in addition be some element of material alteration or embellishment which suffices to make the totality of the work an original work. Of course, even a relatively small alteration or addition quantitatively may, if material, suffice to convert that which is substantially copied from an earlier work into an original work. Whether it does so or not is a question of degree having regard to the quality rather than the quantity of the addition. But copying, per se, however much skill or labour may be devoted to the process, cannot make an original work. A well executed tracing is the result of much labour and skill but remains what it is, a tracing. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the Copyright Act 1956; confers protection on an original work for a generous period. The prolongation of the period of statutory protection by periodic reproduction of the original work with minor alterations is an operation which requires to be scrutinized with some caution to ensure that that for which protection is claimed really is an original artistic work.
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(Emphasis mine)
This suggests that UK law is broadly in line with US, in requiring an element of originality (the 'creative spark' of Bridgeman v Coral).
More recently:
Bailey & Anor v Haynes & Ors [2006] EWPCC 5
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It was also agreed that the law on the subject is the same as that which applies to the concept of originality in the copyright field. The notion of originality is not to be equated with novelty as understood in the field of registered designs (or patents); it is altogether less of a hurdle. There are two basic ingredients. First, the work must originate from the author, that is, it must not have been copied from another work. Secondly, there must be sufficient skill and judgment deployed so that the work cannot be characterised as a purely mechanical exercise.
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(Emphasis mine)
It is hard to see how automated bulk scanning could pass these tests.