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Property Keyed to Sprankling
Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc.
Citation:
499 U.S. 340 (1991).ProfessorTodd Berman
CaseCast™ – "What you need to know"
Facts
Rural Telephone Service Company (the plaintiff) is a certified public utility that is required by Kansas state law to publish an annual phonebook for the several communities it services. The plaintiff publishes both yellow pages containing its business subscribers and white pages that contain its residential subscribers. Feist Publications (the defendant) is a publishing company that publishes an area-wide phone book containing both white and yellow pages that covers a geographical range much larger than that of the plaintiff, encompassing 11 different telephone companies. Both parties distribute their phonebooks for free and earn revenue by selling advertisements. The plaintiff compiles its listings from information provided by the subscribers when they sign up for service. The defendant approached each of the 11 telephone companies in the area it covers, offering to pay them for the rights to use their white pages listings, and only the plaintiff refused. The defendant decided to use the plaintiff’s listings anyway, and after verifying the listings and adding some additional information, the defendant published the plaintiff’s listings in their own phonebook.
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