Ho v. Taflove

Ho v. Taflove
Court	United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Full case name	Seng-Tiong Ho, et al. v. Allen Taflove, et al.
Decided	June 6, 2011
Citation(s)	Ho v. Taflove (7th Cir. June 6, 2011), Text.
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting	Kenneth F. Ripple and David F. Hamilton, Circuit Judges, and G. Patrick Murphy, District Judge (opinion signed by judge Elaine E. Bucklo)
Case opinions
The plaintiff's research materials were unprotectable ideas under copyright law's merger doctrine. Summary judgment in favor of the defendants.

Ho v. Taflove is a Seventh Circuit case about the copyrightability of scientific data. In 2011, the Seventh Circuit affirmed a 2009 decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois holding that the expression of ideas can be copyrighted but not the ideas themselves (the idea-expression divide).^[1][2][3]

The plaintiffs alleged that the defendants violated the copyright law of the United States by publishing equations, figures, and text from research materials that the plaintiffs had produced. They also alleged that Illinois state laws were violated by publication of the materials. The district court granted summary judgment against the plaintiffs. The appeals court confirmed the judgment, concluding that the research materials were unprotectable ideas under the merger doctrine of copyright law, and that the claims of state law violations had no merit and were superseded by the Copyright Act.