in regard to collections of facts, justice o'connor stated that copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself. if feist were to take the directory and rearrange it, it would destroy the copyright owned in the data. "notwithstanding a valid copyright, a subsequent compiler remains free to use the facts contained in another's publication to aid in preparing a competing work, so long as the competing work does not feature the same selection and arrangement," justice o'connor wrote.