A. Substantial Similarity
There are two essential questions at the heart of any copyright infringement action: whether the plaintiff owned the copyrighted work and whether the defendant copied it. See Kohus v. Mariol, The federal constitution requires, moreover, that to be actionable the copying must be of elements of the copyrighted work that are “original.” See Feist Publ'ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., To be original, an element must both be an independent creation of its author and involve at least minimal creativity. . To establish that it has been copied, a plaintiff must either introduce direct evidence of the defendant's copying or prove it indirectly by showing that the defendant had access to the plaintiff's work and that there is a substantial similarity between it and the defendant's work, thus giving rise to an inference of copying. See Ellis v. Diffie, Even if access cannot be proven, a plaintiff may prevail by showing a high degree of similarity between the two works.