RE: Spanish Copyright Law for translating a book published in 1904: Help!!

If the translation and the publication are taking place in the USA, you do not need to know about Spanish law; under the principle of national treatment, it is US law which applies.

Spain is a Member State of the European Union. In the European Union the duration of copyright is, as in the USA, 70 years after the death of the author. Thus you cannot be certain that the 1904 book has passed into the public domain without knowing when the author died, although with each passing year it becomes more likely.

If the author were a young man when he published the book and subsequently lived to a ripe old age the book could remain in copyright in the EU for a further thirty-odd years. Equally it could be long out of copyright; without knowing when the author died, it is impossible to determine.

Note that the situation may be slightly different in the USA, despite the identity of current copyright terms, due to differing transitional arrangements in the implementation of longer terms.

Edward Barrow
New Media Copyright Consultant
http://www.copyweb.co.uk/
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On Friday, January 17, 2003 8:34 PM, Islam, Ramona [SMTP:RIslam[_at_]mail.fairfield.edu] wrote:
> Hello,
>
> If you know anything about the copyright laws in Spain, I will very much
> appreciate your help finding out if there is any problem for one of our
> professors to translate a book published in Spain in 1904. Will he need
> permission, or will this work have passed into the Public Domain by now?
 If
> you know of any resources that will provide me with this answer
(preferably
> in English, though the professor obviously reads Spanish), that would be
a
> great start.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Ramona
>
> Ramona Islam, Multimedia Librarian
> Fairfield University, DiMenna-Nyselius Library
> 1073 N. Benson Rd., Fairfield, CT 06430
> tel:(203)254-4000 x 2138 fax: (203)254-4135
> rislam[_at_]mail.fairfield.edu
Received on Mon Jan 20 2003 - 07:31:41 GMT