Re: Notice on unpublished excerpt

This is typically done, not with a copyright notice, but with an acknowledgement in the forward, bibliography, or by footnote: "Excerpt from XXXX, courtesy of the estate of John Deceased, all rights reserved."

John Noble

At 12:30 PM -0500 2/27/06, Dodi Schultz wrote:
>A fellow writer has posed a question about copyright notice wording, and
>I'm hoping that one of the legal authorities on this list will have the
>answer.
>
>An individual ("The Heir") has received an inheritance, including an
>unpublished memoir, from a grandparent. The Heir, a writer, plans
>eventually to edit the memoir and see to its publication. (The grandparent
>was not a writer but was prominent in another field and in fact had
>published two volumes of memoirs; this will be the third.)
>
>Meanwhile, another writer ("The Author") has become aware of the content of
>the memoir and wishes to include a short excerpt in a work now in progress.
>The Heir is agreeable to this but wishes to require, among other
>conditions, that the excerpt be accompanied by a copyright notice.
>
>Yes, The Heir is aware that it's not required but wishes it to appear
>nevertheless. No, the memoir has not been registered with the Copyright
>Office.
>
>Title 17 specifies that the notice, if used, must include the name of the
>copyright owner (that would be The Heir, not the grandparent, yes?) and the
>"year of first publication"--but this material has not been published. I
>can't find instructions applying to unpublished materials. What year should
>be used? The year of the grandparent's death? Or the year that The Author's
>work, containing this brief excerpt from the unpublished work, appears?
>
>Or should The Heir rush to register the full memoir and use THIS year?
>
>--DS
>
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Received on Tue Feb 28 2006 - 04:30:30 GMT