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This information is taken directly from the court opinion. It is not taken out of context nor is it altered. Relevant footnotes are included at the bottom.

From Country Kids v. Sheen, 77 F.3d 1280 (10th Cir 1996) While the fact of copying is difficult to prove directly, Plaintiff can indirectly prove copying by establishing that Defendants had access to the copyrighted work and that there are probative similarities between the copyrighted material and the allegedly copied material. Gates Rubber, 9 F.3d at 832; 6 see also Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, 3 Nimmer on Copyright, § 13.01[B], at 13-10 to 13-12 (1995). A finding that Defendants copied some aspect of Plaintiff's dolls, however, would not end the court's inquiry, as liability for copyright infringement will attach only where protected elements of a copyrighted work are copied. Gates Rubber, 9 F.3d at 833 (citing Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99, 101-03 (1879)). To impose such liability, the court must find substantial similarity between those aspects of Plaintiff's dolls which are legally protectable and the Defendants' dolls. See Autoskill, 994 F.2d at 1490. Thus, the question of whether Defendants infringed on Plaintiff's copyright turns on whether Defendants' product is substantially similar to the protectable elements of Plaintiff's product. To make this determination, we find it useful to apply the "abstraction-filtration-comparison" test. See Autoskill 994 F.2d at 1490-98; Gates Rubber, 9 F.3d at 834-842. At the abstraction step, we separate the ideas (and basic utilitarian functions), which are not protectable, from the particular expression of the work. Then, we filter out the nonprotectable components of the product from the original expression. Finally, we compare the remaining protected elements to the allegedly copied work to determine if the two works are substantially similar. In the instant case, Plaintiff claims that the district court erred in applying this test by filtering out the size, shape and medium of the dolls and by interpreting the "substantial similarity" standard to require virtual identity of products. Footnote 6 The "abstraction-filtration-comparison" test, or the "successive filtration" test, was developed for use in the context of alleged infringement of computer software, and it is exclusively in that context that we have previously applied the test. See, e.g., Gates Rubber, 9 F.3d at 834-39; Autoskill, 994 F.2d at 1491-98. However, we see no reason to limit the abstraction-filtration-comparison approach to cases involving computer programs. See 3 Nimmer § 13.03[E], at 13-96 to 13-97 (The successive filtration test "should be considered not only for factual compilations and computer programs, but across the gamut of copyright law")(footnotes omitted).