> It makes it mysterious to me at which point a mere collection of "facts" about a fictional character turns into a copyrightable depiction. The decision by Ha

> It makes it mysterious to me at which point a mere collection of "facts" about a fictional character turns into a copyrightable depiction. The decision by Hand in National is widely considered to be extremely clear and readable, if you're really curious. It's important to understand that while mere collections of facts are not copyrightable, nothing about fiction is factual -- you can't defend Captain Marvel on the basis of "we're merely reporting the facts about his powers, which happen to mirror facts about someone elses'" because those powers aren't facts at all but represent conscious creative decisions on the part of Fawcett Comics. When all of your creative decisions are tuned to mirroring the creative decisions of another copyrighted work, you're in pretty well-defined copyright violation territory.