492
Opinion of the Court
and injunctive relief, and damages. In response to the Authors' complaint, the Print and Electronic Publishers raised the reproduction and distribution privilege accorded collective work copyright owners by 17 U. S. C. § 201(c). After discovery, both sides moved for summary judgment.
The District Court granted summary judgment for the Publishers, holding that § 201(c) shielded the Database reproductions. 972 F. Supp. 804, 806 (1997). The privilege conferred by § 201(c) is transferable, the court first concluded, and therefore could be conveyed from the original Print Publishers to the Electronic Publishers. Id., at 816. Next, the court determined, the Databases reproduced and distributed the Authors' works, in § 201(c)'s words, "as part of . . . [a] revision of that collective work" to which the Authors had first contributed. To qualify as "revisions," according to the court, works need only "preserve some significant original aspect of [collective works]—whether an original selection or an original arrangement." Id., at 821. This criterion was met, in the District Court's view, because the Databases preserved the Print Publishers' "selection of articles" by copying all of the articles originally assembled in the periodicals' daily or weekly issues. Id., at 823. The Databases "highlight[ed]" the connection between the articles and the print periodicals, the court observed, by showing for each article not only the author and periodical, but also the print publication's particular issue and page numbers. Id., at 824 ("[T]he electronic technologies not only copy the publisher defendants' complete original 'selection' of articles, they tag those articles in such a way that the publisher defendants' original selection remains evident online.").
The Authors appealed, and the Second Circuit reversed. 206 F. 3d 161 (1999). The Court of Appeals granted summary judgment for the Authors on the ground that the Databases were not among the collective works covered by § 201(c), and specifically, were not "revisions" of the periodicals in which the Articles first appeared. Id., at 167-170. Just as § 201(c) does not "permit a Publisher to sell a hard
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