Fairey countered that his conduct did not constitute "improper appropriation" because he had not taken any protected expression from Garcia's original photo.

The ideas or facts in a work are not subject to copyright protection, but the "protected expression" is.

CV-91-3871-BAC, as authority for practical necessity to make intermediary copies to understand protected expression in software.

A column in December asked if horn-honking, one of the city's more maddening irritants, may sometimes be viewed as a form of protected expression.

But neither are we persuaded that, in other applications, the language of 954(d)(1) itself will give rise to the suppression of protected expression.

Micro Star also argued that any use of D/N-3D's protected expression constituted fair use.

The court in Salinger v. Random House had found that unpublished works "normally enjoy complete protection against copying any protected expression".

In this case the appeals court had found seven cases of infringement of protected expression.

Without that criterion, he argued, the government "can assert no legitimate interest strong enough to justify chilling protected expression."

The courts, too, are careful to police the distinction between protected expression and proscribed conduct, though it is not always easy to find the line.