United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit

“ Darden’s revised application indicated that he was claiming protection in the website’s “text; map designs and formats; compilation, formatting, and arrangement of text, maps graphics, and listing data.” J.A. 108. In rejecting Darden’s claim, the Copyright Office noted that a website may well contain copyrightable elements, but its formatting and layout is not registrable. Compilation authorship is limited to the original selection, coordination and arrangement of the elements or data contained within a work. ”

“ Pecor selected a font to use in labeling the states, and he added call-out labels as well. Pecor used the same process for the individual maps of each state. After completing the project, Pecor assigned Darden any copyright interest he held in the maps and the design of the website.
In May 2002, Darden filed an application with the Copyright Office seeking to register his website, which he titled “APPRAISERS dotCOM” for purposes of the application, as a technical drawing. Darden described APPRAISERSdotCOM as a derivative work based on “US Census black and white outline maps” and “clip art.” ”

“ Darden also presented his own declaration in which he stated that he had “received calls from people and companies asking whether I would license our maps for them to use on their web sites ... [demonstrating that] people recognize the maps as being unique and proprietary to us.” J.A. 92.
The Board of Appeals again affirmed the denial of registration for both the Maps and the APPRAISERSdotCOM works. ”

“ Rather, Congress is empowered to provide copyright protection.”) . Copyright is solely a creature of statute; whatever rights and remedies exist do so only because Congress provided them. See Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 431, 104 S.Ct. 774, 78 L.Ed.2d 574 (1984) . Thus, as there is no constitutional right to copyright registration, the Register’s refusal to register Darden’s claim cannot be “contrary to constitutional right” as it must be for section 706 (2) (B) to apply. ”

“ Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 416, 91 S.Ct. 814, 28 L.Ed.2d 136 (1971) ) , or whether “the agency has relied on factors which Congress has not intended it to consider, [or] entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem,” Motor Vehicle Mfrs., 463 U.S. at 43, 103 S.Ct. ”