copyright provides protection for which of the following?

Copyright law protects the tangible expression of an idea, not the idea itself. This fundamental principle is known as the idea/expression dichotomy. It grants the creator of an original work—such as a book, song, painting, or software code—exclusive rights to that specific manifestation. However, it does not prevent others from independently creating their own work based on the same underlying concept or idea. The protection is tied to the form of expression, which must be fixed in a tangible medium.

1. U.S. Copyright Office. (2021). Copyright Basics (Circular 1). Section: "What Is Not Protected by Copyright," p. 2. "Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, principles, or discoveries... The law protects only the particular manner in which an author expresses ideas in a literary, artistic, or musical work."

2. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). (2016). Understanding Copyright and Related Rights. WIPO Publication No. 909E. Section: "What can be protected by copyright?", p. 8. "Copyright protection extends only to expressions, and not to ideas, procedures, methods of operation or mathematical concepts as such."

3. Bouchoux, D. E. (2020). Intellectual Property: The Law of Trademarks, Copyrights, Patents, and Trade Secrets (5th ed.). Cengage Learning. Chapter 6, Section 6-3a, "The Idea/Expression Dichotomy," p. 169. "It is a bedrock principle of copyright law that while an author’s expression of an idea is copyrightable, the idea itself is not."

4. MIT OpenCourseWare. (2013). 6.903J Patents, Copyrights, and the Law of Intellectual Property, Spring 2013. Lecture Notes, "Copyrights: Scope of Protection." The notes discuss the foundational U.S. Supreme Court case Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1879), which established that copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea or system itself.