Okay, Mike, you're right about the Feist case. The Feist case is cited quite often as justification for taking other data bases, but applying it to genealogical databases is like comparing apples and oranges, isn't it? "The protection of copyright must inhere in a creatively original selection of facts to be reported and not in the creative means used to discover those facts.� (Bell South et al) If M. O'Brien sorts through MA death records and comes up with "MA Deaths of Irish Natives with Named Parents" isn't that a creatively original selection of facts? If McWethey comes up with a Palatine compilation from English records, again, isn't that a creatively original selection of facts? I believe the Supreme Court would find those sorts of compilations worthy of copyright protection. See below: "The originality requirement is not very stringent. In fact, the selection or arrangement methods that others have used may unknowingly be used; novelty is not required.� For the originality requirment, the author needs only to make the *arrangement or selection independantly, without copying the selection or arrangement from another work*, and it must display some minimal level of creativity. While most factual compilations will pass this test..." Kathleen.