Author of Book gets crushed

In Reed v. Peterson (USDC Northern District No. C04-00228 WWS), two books about managing a foot ball team's use of time outs. The court found that Reed's book was technically a functional book and thus accorded less protection than fiction.
Here is another example of the court determining that certain works are afforded less protection by others, without the use of an expert, and requiring the infringer to be virtually identical to be an infringer.

"Therefore, “similarity of expression may have to amount to verbatim reproduction
or very close paraphrasing before a factual work will be deemed infringed.” Landsberg,
736 F.2d at 488; see also Apple, 35 F.3d at 1447 (discussing the “thin” protection afforded to
factual works).

So basically, authors who thought the US Constitution provided a trade off of protection in exchange for creating expressive works are again warned.

Comments

[John Sterner]

Are you saying that no one should be able to discuss a topic (with a differing point of view) that another author has discussed because the first author has exclusive rights?