Defendants maintain that Plaintiffs do not possess a valid copyright because the Course is not an original work of Schucman but of Jesus.
Originality is an essential element of copyright law. See Feist, 499 U.S. at 345 ("The sine qua non of copyright is originality."). Copyright protection only extends to those aspects of a registrant's works that are original to the "author" of the work. See 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) ("Copyright protection subsists … in original works of authorship … ."). However, the Copyright Act does not require a high degree of originality. As Feist explains:
To qualify for copyright protection, a work must be original to the author. Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, "no matter how crude, humble, or obvious" it might be. Originality does not signify novelty; a work may be original even though it closely resembles other works so long as the similarity is fortuitous, not the result of copying.
Feist, 499 U.S. at 345-46, 111 S.Ct. 1282 (citations omitted).
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