Facts The case itself was the result of Bridgeman Art Library questioning the right of Corel Corporation to reproduce high-quality photographic slides that the Library had made from original paintings which were in the public domain. Issues The library also emphasized that under English and Welsh law, such reproductions seemed to be protected by copyright; the Court rejected that this applied to cases under U.S. jurisdiction (despite the fact that the original case was to be heard under English law) and raised doubts whether the UK attitude towards these reproductions was as legally decisive as was claimed: "While the Court,s conclusion as to the law governing copyrightability renders the point moot, the Court is persuaded that plaintiff,s copyright claim would fail even if the governing law were that of the United Kingdom." [1] Recent events have thrown further doubt about the validity of the original rulings under UK law, for not only has the Museum Copyright Group, as outlined below, received legal counsel in the UK contradicting the rulings, in May 2007 a reenactment of the case by two leading professors of Intellectual Property at Queen Mary College, University of London resulted in a judgement in favour of Bridgeman, and against Corel. In British copyright law, which the US judge appeared to have misunderstood, the skill, labour and judgement of the creator is protectable by copyright law as much as "originality". Thus the skill, labour and judgement involved in the creation of a high-quality photographic image is likely to be protectable by copyright in the United Kingdom. Ruling The court ruled in favor of the defendant Corel Corporation. Consequences The case has caused great concern among various museums, which rely on income received from licensing photographic reproductions of objects and works in their collections. Some speculate the case would likely not apply to photographs of three-dimensional objects, as the photographic arrangement would plausibly require some creativity. This line of reasoning has been followed in other cases, such as Eastern America Trio Products v. Tang Electronic Corp (2000), where it was ruled that there is "very broad scope for copyright in photographs, encompassing almost any photograph that reflects more than ,slavish copying,." The case has enabled broad public use and reuse of older artwork in a large variety of contexts. It has also persuaded several important libraries to drop restrictions on the redistribution of images of out-of-copyright manuscripts. Several federal courts have followed the ruling in Bridgeman, though its persuasive legal authority, as a district court opinion, has not been confirmed. It has yet to be cited by any appellate-level circuit court, and has also not been reviewed by the Supreme Court. However, the latter,s ruling in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service (1991), explicitly rejecting difficulty of labor or expense as a consideration in copyrightability, seems to support the fundamental reasoning behind Bridgeman. United Kingdom implications Although the ruling in Bridgeman stated that the copyright claim would fail even if the laws of the United Kingdom were used, no version of the case has been brought up in those courts, leaving its applicability to U.K. law undecided. In particular, copyright protection based on the skill and labor of the creator, known as "sweat of the brow", has been upheld in some U.K. cases, while being rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991. The ruling,s citation of English and Welsh law prompted the private Museums Copyright Group in the United Kingdom (UK) to issue a report on the case in 2004. Their opinion piece concluded that the ruling "is not binding in the UK and is of doubtful authority even in the United States. It has not influenced the way museums negotiate or license rights and there have been no serious attempts by commercial users to undermine the position of museums." However, as a group with obvious interests in the outcome of the case, their views cannot be considered disinterested. Nonetheless, major UK museums and libraries continue to claim copyright over photographic reproductions of items in their collections.