What does the copyright for a work actually apply to?
Copyright applies *only* to the works themselves: the article, the book, the movie, the outline -- not the ideas contained therein.
Functional/Factual elements not covered.
So If I wrote a book on the history of the SF Earthquake, the facts I reported would be in the public domain. -- The other parts could be used in a variety of fair uses. (More details on this coming up.)
Baker v. Selden case (1879) - Selden devised a novel bookkeeping system that permitted accountants to condense six pages of accounts onto only two. Selden published several copyrighted manuals about his system, and hired an agent to travel through the country seeking to license the system and the ledger forms Selden had designed to go with it.
An Ohio accountant, impressed with the Selden system but unable to pay Selden's price, adopted it anyway, and later peddled his version to other accountants. The US Supreme court dismissed Selden's copyright infringement suit, saying:
"The very object of publishing a book on science or the useful arts is to communicate to the world the useful knowledge which it contains. But this object would be frustrated if the knowledge could not be used without incurring the guilt of piracy of the book."