Of course, only protected materials can be infringed. When the part taken from a protected work is de minimis, that is, so small that it cannot be protected by copyright law, for example, only a few words or phrases, there is no infringement. The same reasoning may apply to other public-domain materials, notably of style and form. For example, when a painter copied, albeit quite abstractly, the typical posture of a female nude portrayed in a shot by a famous photographer, the court denied protection, finding that no protected element was taken even if the painting recognizably alluded to the photograph at