
Ackerman v. Pink asks how much of a written history can be claimed as proprietary by the author of that history. The answer: Not much. It is black letter that the author of a non-fiction work cannot prevent others from using historical facts in some other work – even if those historical facts are known only because of the author’s independent research. Copyright covers only the author’s expression of the research, not the research itself.
Ackerman is interesting because the analysis the court uses to separate the historical fact from the author’s expression is misplaced – even though the Court appears to have reached the right conclusion.