Re: copyright in the digitized object?

On Mon, 28 Feb 2000, Julia Crawford <juliac[_at_]okstate.edu> wrote:
>
> Recently, our university library made available a public domain item
> (government document published in 1904) on the web in digital format.
> Specifically, we OCR'd an historical text, which is not rare, but it
> is a primary source document valuable to researchers in particular
> fields.
>
> A publisher contacted us and asked permission to capture the text from
> our web site and reprint in book format which they in turn plan to
> sell. Since the book is not rare, the publisher could certainly make
> photocopies of the original document to reprint, but prefers our text,
> for whatever reason.
>
> Of course many commercial publishers take public domain government
> documents and charge high prices for value-added services such as
> additional indexing, etc. We have put value in the document, by
> digitizing it. But other than that, the value lies in the ability
> to keyword search it, and follow the links we've provided, which
> doesn't help the publisher who will just print it. Is the value to
> the publisher that the text is digitized and can be presented in
> any manner (font, appearance, etc.), and they're not tied to a
> photocopy of the original document?
>
> Did the publisher have to ask permission or were they just being
> courteous?

I would think that the publisher could do it without your authorization. The only copyright you could claim would be on the digitization of the image, which I do not think constitutes enough originality to qualify for copyright protection. Bridgeman v. Corel would support this.

Robert Panzer
VAGA
<bigbusie[_at_]aol.com> Received on Wed Mar 01 2000 - 19:05:39 GMT