On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 12:42:53PM -0500, Elizabeth Barham wrote: > Branden writes: > > > _Matthew Bender and Hyperlaw v. West_ and _Feist Publications, > > Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co._ would indicate "no" (in the > > United States), but I don't think there's anything *squarely* on > > point. > > I'm not sure who Hyperlaw is but I'm familiar with West. As I recall, > there was a case where one company took West's publications and sent > them to another country where they employed many people to type-in > West's documents which was found perfectly legal (the legal documents > themselves could not be copyrighted but West's hold on the documents > is that they created them). > > Like I said, I typed these in by hand. How the material was entered was not germane to the case I'm citing[1], as I understand it. For the sake of future Web/mailing list searches, here are some links for further reading on the cases: _Matthew Bender and Company, Inc. v. West Publishing Company_ and _Hyperlaw, Inc. v. West Publishing Company_: http://www6.law.com/ny/links/hyperlaw.html (The above decision is interesting for its discussion of the meaning of "derivative works" under U.S. copyright law, a recurring subject on this mailing list.) _Fest Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co._: http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/499_US_340.htm (The above decision is interesting for its discussion of the meaning of "originality" under U.S. copyright law, and the scope of copyright, which are recurring themes on this mailing list.) > I consider it public domain anyway so naturally that's how its going > to be released. Okay. Please be sure you note that fact prominently. Amateur copyright police sometimes freak out and draw the wrong kind of conclusion when they can't find a copyright notice. > Thank you everyone for your feedback. No problem! [1] IIRC, though, such issues did matter to Judge Kaplan and the Federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in _Universal v. Reimerdes_ (a.k.a. _MPAA v. 2600_). -- G. Branden Robinson | The key to being a Southern Debian GNU/Linux | Baptist: It ain't a sin if you branden@debian.org | don't get caught. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Anthony Davidson
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