On the subject of “creativity”: note that in Bridgeman v. Corel (one of my all-time favourite cases), the Court found that slavish copies of a work - meaning no creative content was added - did not create a copyrightable work. Creativity was clearly in that case a requisite for a new copyright.
To answer a prior question, yes, publishers and people in general put “Copyright” notices with scary language all the time on non-copyrightable and public domain works. I just bought a collection of scans of photos of train wrecks from the 1800’s, where the publisher tries to claim that they “own” the copyright on these public domain works because they “fixed” them in a book, and that I would be cracked down on hard by the Feds if I dared to copy them in any form. Last week I saw a webpage which had Wuthering Heights on it, taken from Project Gutenberg, where they claimed “ALL TEXT COPYRIGHTED BY US.” It’s a lie, of course, but sadly, IIRC false claims of copyright are only actionable if actual fraud is intended. I could be wrong on that.