Try Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), summarized in the Wikipedia article [1].
The court's opinion [2] surveys the relevant case law beginning at paragraph 19.
The court states its conclusion and summarizes its reasoning in paragraph 25: "In this case, plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create 'slavish copies' of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances."
Thanks for that, the Wikipedia page has some useful links and info on the relevance to UK copyright law. The case I was remembering is almost certainly this one - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_copyr... concerning use of photos of images in the National Portrait Gallery on Wikimedia pages, the case dating from 2009.
Try Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), summarized in the Wikipedia article [1].
The court's opinion [2] surveys the relevant case law beginning at paragraph 19.
The court states its conclusion and summarizes its reasoning in paragraph 25: "In this case, plaintiff by its own admission has labored to create 'slavish copies' of public domain works of art. While it may be assumed that this required both skill and effort, there was no spark of originality -- indeed, the point of the exercise was to reproduce the underlying works with absolute fidelity. Copyright is not available in these circumstances."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_....
[2] http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/36_FSupp2d_191.ht....