Reuse Case: Folktales

An editor publishes a collection of folktales, reusing several stories from another tales' collection that was published a few years earlier. Believing these folktales belong to the public domain, the editor assumes they can be reused by anyone. The persons named as authors of the previous collection decide to sue the editor, claiming that they have done all the work of gathering and compositing the folktales, and that therefore they should be considered the rightful authors. They win the court case.