Re: untraceable rightholders

On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Jennifer Rytting <jenny.rebecca[_at_]asu.edu> wrote:
>
> I have had a translation of a Middle English poem accepted for
> publication in a graduate student journal and have been trying,
> for the past several months, to get permission to reprint the
> transcription of the Middle English text of the poem that was
> published in a journal in Germany (_Archiv feur das Studium der
> neueren Sprachen und Literaturen_) in 1935 (since I can't afford
> to go to England to look at the medieval manuscript myself). I
> contacted the current publishers of the journal, who said that
> another publishing house held the rights to the volume in question
> and that the copyright for the article most likely would have
> reverted to the author (who died in 1965) anyway. I then
> contacted the second publisher, who verified that the rights had
> reverted to the author and been inherited by his family, and
> suggested I contact VG Wort, an organization that "administers
> the rights of german authors." I did so, but was told that they
> couldn't help me because they didn't have the information I needed
> in their files. I then tried CISAC, but they couldn't help me
> either. What else can I do to find the copyright holders?
>
> The managing editor of the journal that accepted my translation
> has suggested that we may be able to go forward with publication
> without permission to use the transcription because this journal
> is published by a not-for-profit organization for educational
> purposes and because I have a made an honest attempt to find the
> copyright holders. Is this likely to be the case? Is there more
> I should do?

The original authors medieval (when does middle English end?) rights are expired. Editing a work with expired copyright for the first time has an own copyright protection (at least in Austria and most likely in Europe because of the copyright terms directive) which is much shorter (20 years what I remember). Somebody reading his may find the appropriate US regulation -- if it exists. This does not concern the comments about the medieval work but only the original text. The comments may be used following fair use principles.

To find relatives you may try to visit a genealogy newsgroup. Identifiable http://www.rootweb.org/ news:soc.genealogy.german

Peter Paul Sint, RU Institutional Change and European Integration IWE, Postg.7-9/1/2, A-1010 Vienna, EU, http://www.soe.oeaw.ac.at/sint/ Received on Tue Jun 27 2000 - 19:07:31 GMT