Re: Magazine owns my voluntarily contributed article?

No, no, no, and no. You don't need a license. You don't need to pay a fee. If you wrote it and it's original, you own the copyright. You just can't sue anybody until you register the copyright -- at least not here in the U.S.

Whether the first publisher had an implied license based on your submission is open to question. Unless there's something you haven't told us, a submission without more, is not a license to publish. It is an invitation to discuss the terms of a license to publish. At the same time, the Washington Post seems to get by with a published notice that all letters to the editor become the property of the Post, with permission to publish them, and the author warrants that they haven't been published anywhere else, or something like that. God knows if it would hold up in court, and I don't know if your facts are even close, but it's a possibility. Whether anybody else can publish it depends on the scope of the license, if any, granted to the first publisher, particularly whether it was an exclusive license.

Assuming you can't afford a lawyer to deal with this, you want to ask the first publisher for documentation of the terms and conditions under which it claims a license to publish your work in the first place, and to restrict subsequent publication in any case. Then get back to us.

I'm not your lawyer. Free advice is worth what you pay for it.

John Noble

At 11:22 PM +0300 6/20/05, <islam_for_life[_at_]hotmail.com> wrote:
>Hi,
>Thanks for replying. You're right, I wasn't exactly saying they needed my
>permission, but just a note telling me they have indeed accepted my
>piece, so I
>could have avoided this current situation. Well, I haven't bought a license or
>anything of the sort (that $30 fee, I think?) that would declare my original
>work copyrighted by law. So, judging from your answer then, the other two
>magazines can publish my article without referencing to the first mag, right?
>Thank you once again.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "JFN" <jfnbl[_at_]earthlink.com>
>To: "CNI-COPYRIGHT -- Copyright & Intellectual Property"
><CNI-COPYRIGHT[_at_]cni.org>
>Cc: <islam_for_life[_at_]hotmail.com>
>Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 8:43 PM
>Subject: Re: [CNI-(C)] Magazine owns my voluntarily contributed article?
>
>
>At 12:05 PM -0400 6/20/05, <islam_for_life[_at_]hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Hello,
>>I was wondering if someone who knows the law could help me out here.
>>
>>Recently, I sent an article of mine to a couple of magazines, some
>>based in the
>>US and others elsewhere. Now, I said in my letter that if any institution was
>>interested in publishing my piece, I would like to know beforehand. Two
>>magazines (one in the US, one in the UK) responded, saying they were
>>interested,
>>but at the same time, I came to know that another magazine (based in
>>the US) had
>>already printed my article without informing me. Although I did not have any
>>problem with that, I was now confused as to whether I could let the other two
>>magazines who had actually replied, print my piece or not. When I
>>called those
>>who had printed my piece to ask regarding this, they said sure, we give
>>permission, but the other magazines must cite us as the source. I don't agree
>>with them, because, firstly, I requested to be informed before
>>publication of my
>>article which they didn't, and secondly, because I did not receive
>>any monetary
>>compensation or anything of the sort from the magazine or even any
>>contract that
>>would stipulate that by simply submitting my article to their email address I
>>give away my entire rights to my original work to them (not that my work is
>>really copyrighted by law), and thirdly, the other two magazines received my
>>work directly from me. Am I right? Please let me know.
>
>I don't understand why you think your article isn't protected by
>copyright, but if that's correct then the first publisher didn't need
>your permission, and the second and third don't have to credit the
>first. If you do have a copyright in the article, the first might
>claim an implied license by virtue of the submission, but it is
>presumptively non-exclusive.
>
>John Noble
Received on Tue Jun 21 2005 - 21:35:00 GMT