Meshwerks to "digitize and model" Toyota's vehicles, and Meshwerks' invoice submitted to G&W for payment reflects that this is exactly the service Meshwerks performed. Aplt's App. at 113, 115. Meshwerks itself has consistently described digitization and modeling as an attempt accurately to depict real-world, three-dimensional objects as digital images viewable on a computer screen. See, e.g., id. at 369 ("the graphic sculptor is not intending to 'redesign' the product, he or she is attempting to depict that object in the most realistic way"); id. at 370 (goal is "to create a realistic depiction on the computer screen"); id. at 378 (“Meshwerks’ graphic sculptors [] create realistic-looking depictions of complicated real-world objects on a two dimensional screen . . . a digital representation of the real object"); id. at 455 (Meshwerks "basically draws a three dimensional rendering of that object in the computer . . . it closely resembles the original"). The parties thus intended to have Meshwerks create base-layer digital models to which the original and creative elements viewers would see in actual advertisements could be added by others in subsequent processes.
Other courts before us have examined and relied on a putative copyright holder's intent in holding that the resultant work was not original and thus subject to copyright protection. The Sixth Circuit, for example, held that a series of catalog illustrations depicting auto transmission parts were not independently copyrightable. ATC Distrib. Group, Inc, 402 F.3d at 712. The drawings had been copied by hand from photographs in a competitor’s catalog. Id. In denying
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