Extract to table

Fourth, the contractual provisions in Article VII of the MDLA must be carefully crafted to prevent Meridian from asserting rights through contract that it could not assert under copyright law alone

Several requirements must be satisfied for a work to constitute a derivative work subject to the original copyright owner's exclusive rights: First, the derivative work must be "based upon" one or more preexisting works — that is, it must incorporate material from the preexisting work

The new work must actually incorporate copyrightable expression from the preexisting work

Second, the derivative must incorporate a copyrightable portion of the preexisting work

Third, courts generally require "substantial similarity" — the derivative must contain recognizable elements of the underlying copyrighted work

Threshold Question: Is Meridian's Raw Data Copyrightable? Before analyzing whether Quorum's model outputs are "derivative works" of Meridian's data, we must first address whether Meridian's underlying data is copyrightable at all