According to Article 3(1)(1) of the Copyright Act, the term "work" refers to a creation falling within literary, scientific, artistic, or other intellectual domains.  Additionally, literary works include poetry, lyrics, prose, novels, scripts, academic treatises, speeches, and other literary works.  Nevertheless, regardless of the type of work, to obtain protection under the Copyright Act, a work must demonstrate the author's uniqueness and originality.  Taking literary works as an example, if a writing lacks personal creative input in its paragraph arrangement or choice of wording, and its content organization, structure, and language do not reflect a sufficient degree of subjective creativity—or if it merely compiles data through automated processing without subjective selection—it is unlikely to be regarded as having originality.

 

In the case facts of Judgment No.: 113-Ming-Chu-Su-38 rendered by the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court ("IPCC"), the parties dispute whether the plaintiff's article, titled “Love Patterns and Traits Resulting from the 14 Primary Stars in the Purple Star Astrology Chart (i.e., Chinese astrology chart) within the Marriage Palace, and Recommendations for Such Love Patterns,” has originality.  The IPCC stated in this judgment that the plaintiff's work centers on love patterns categorized according to astrological bodies.  However, the selection and arrangement of the content in each category are similar to one another; neither the textual expression nor the structural logic reveals the author's personal style, and no subjective creativity is apparent.  The IPCC stated that since the plaintiff's article requires users to input information such as gender, date of birth, and time of birth, and then calculates a love pattern using a formula, it fails to express personal analysis and interpretation, and thus the plaintiff's work does not meet the requirements for literary works under the Copyright Act.

 

According to the rulings that the IPCC cited above, if the content of a work relates to public domain material (such as zodiac signs, Chinese zodiac animals, or blood types) and is derived from such public domain content, and if it primarily presents established conclusions (such as personality traits associated with different zodiac signs, Chinese zodiac animals, or blood types), it may be difficult to demonstrate that such a work possesses variations that are sufficiently distinguishable from pre-existing works.  Under such circumstances, if the author cannot provide evidence of independent creation, such as original manuscripts, writing processes, or drafts, the court may determine that the works do not sufficiently express the author's individuality or uniqueness and therefore lack originality.