Wrestling:Threshold of originality

The threshold of originality is a concept in copyright law that is used to assess whether or not a particular work, or a portion of it, can be copyrighted. It is used to distinguish works that are sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection from those that are not. In this context, "originality" refers to "coming from someone as the originator/author" (insofar as it somehow reflects the author's personality), rather than "never having occurred or existed before" (which would amount to the protection of something new, as in patent protection).
 * For further information, see Threshold of originality on Wikipedia

Civil law countries
Civil law countries require a relatively high minimum level of intellectual creativity which will exclude typical signatures and simple logos from copyright protection.

If you are aware of specific case law or legal advice on this issue in any country, please add a "Threshold of originality" section to the appropriate Copyright rules by territory country subpage, and add a link to it with an entry below.

Common law countries
Most Common law countries use a "skill and labour" test to determine the minimum level of originality capable of attracting copyright protection, and in some countries such as the UK the required level is extremely low. Without some research into individual laws, it cannot be assumed that a text logo from a Common law country is necessarily allowed on Commons. If there is real doubt about the position a local court would take, then the image must be deleted under the precautionary principle.

If the logo is extremely simple (e.g. in a standard font), it will not be eligible for copyright even in Common law countries.

If you are aware of specific case law or legal advice on this issue in any country, please add a "Threshold of originality" section to the appropriate Commons:Copyright rules by territory country subpage, and add a link to it with an entry below.

Commons decisions

 * See Category:Threshold of originality related deletion requests

Logos and flags

 * File:Hercules 1998 Intertitle.png originally "background isn't elaborate or eligible for any type of copyright" (decided here in 2010), deleted in 2012 as "shows artistry beyond the TOO".

Architecture
Images which have been kept because of lack of originality or de minimis:

Note that some of these decisions were controversial.

Photographs
Photographs which have been deemed ineligible for copyright protection:

Partial copying or cropping of copyrighted works
When a file copies only part of a copyrighted work, that file's copyright status is determined only by what it has copied. If it only copied uncopyrightable elements, then the file is also uncopyrightable. In other words, we judge the copyright status of a file only by what the file itself contains, not by the status of other content the original source contained that was not copied by the file.

Lower threshold in United Kingdom etc.
See (with reasoning of the EDGE logo).
 * File:BBC.svg and many associated variants for BBC divisions were kept, because they only contain Gill Sans, which is an old, standard font.
 * File:Clerical Medical.png (uploaded as non-free content (fair use) on en.wikipedia.org)