copyright protection, the court emphasized that "[t]he illustrations were intended to be as accurate as possible in reproducing the parts shown in the photographs on which they were based, a form of slavish copying that is the antithesis of originality." Id. (emphasis added). In Bridgeman Art Library, the court examined whether color transparencies of public domain works of art were sufficiently original for copyright protection, ultimately holding that, as "exact photographic copies of public domain works of art,” they were not. 36 F. Supp. 2d at 195. In support of its holding, the court looked to the plaintiff’s intent in creating the transparencies: where "the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity," the "spark of originality" necessary for copyright protection was absent. Id. at 197 (emphasis added). Precisely the same holds true here, where, by design, all that was left in Meshwerks’ digital wire-frame models were the designs of Toyota’s vehicles.
C
Although we hold that Meshwerks’ digital, wire-frame models are insufficiently original to warrant copyright protection, we do not turn a blind eye to the fact that digital imaging is a relatively new and evolving technology and that Congress extended copyright protection to "original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed." 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (emphasis added). A Luddite might make the mistake of suggesting that digital modeling, as was once said of photography, allows for
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