But if the original work was a collection of facts that is not protected by copyright, then your derivative work might not be protected by copyright either. Lists of facts are not protected by copyright in the US.

This is true but mostly an abuse of copyright protections in my opinion.

Look at how Westlaw gained private control over the dissemination of public legal decisions through standardizing and copyrighting their presentation of those decisions.

I happy see people lose at putting up copyright gates of this sort, whatever legal right they might have.