The Virtual Map case provides copyright lawyers with a set of conceptually challenging circumstances in which a straightforward application of conventional principles of copyright infringement did not necessarily yield convincingly coherent outcomes. The dualistic character of the copyright works found in maps and the vector data used to create them should, in theory, offer copyright owners a broader scope of protection than if only one species of copyright--literary or artistic--subsisted in these works. However, both the literary and artistic copyright monopolies in such works are still limited by the same fundamental legal principles of copyright infringement which exist to ensure that factual information and data remain accessible to third party users who may seek. and who ought to be encouraged. to develop "new' and updated maps.