Re: Copyright of received correspondence

At 2:10 PM -0500 2/10/05, James Love wrote:
>This is a pretty basic question, but what is the law with regard to
>the copyright on a letter that you receive from someone. If one
>gets a cease and desist letter, a rejection of an article, a letter
>of recommendation, or countless other letters or emails specifically
>sent to a person, can the person receiving the letters publish them
>in a book, a web page, etc, without permission? I see a fair amount
>of this taking place, but don't fully appreciate the legal issues.
>
>Jamie
>
>--
>James Love, Director, CPTech, http://www.cptech.org

It's a fair use issue. I think the leading case is Salinger v. Random House, which involved a biography of J.D. Salinger that included extensive excerpts from his correspondence to other people. The Second Circuit reversed a district court and enjoined the publication.
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/comm/free_speech/salinger.html

Application of the fair use analysis is highly subjective. The reason you see it happen a lot is that hardly anybody registers the copyright in routine correspondence, and doesn't have any reason to object. Salinger is (was? is he alive?) a privacy freak.

Your question also raises a copyrightability issue. J.D. Salinger wrote his letters. Your average cease and desist letter, rejection letter, recommendation letter, is copy-and-paste boilerplate, author unknown.

If you have an actual situation that might lead to litigation, we should talk about it off-list.

John Noble Received on Fri Feb 11 2005 - 03:20:30 GMT