You cannot copyright facts, but you can copyright arrangements of facts, as long as the arrangement has a modicum of creativity. The litmus test for this is li

You cannot copyright facts, but you can copyright arrangements of facts, as long as the arrangement has a modicum of creativity. The litmus test for this is literally the telephone book. The White Pages cannot be copyrighted (the court case you linked). But, the Yellow Pages can be copyrighted. The White Pages are nothing more than an alphabetic listing of phone numbers, but the Yellow Pages groups phone numbers by business type. This involves some editorial discretion, which involves a bare minimum of thinking, and therefore qualifies as a creative work.