Re: Notice on unpublished excerpt

Spend the money and register it.

You don't say when it was written. If it was written in 1978 or after, then the copyright runs from when it was written. The rules are a bit more complex for works written before 1978 for unpublished works, and I don't want to summarize them here on the skeleton of info provided.

The Heir may require a notice of who holds the copyright and that the excerpt is being used with permission. You don't really need the year for that -- you don't need to register the copyright to require the notice.

Steve

On Feb 27, 2006, at 12:30 PM, 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 unpublished memoir, from a grandparent.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 can't find instructions applying to unpublished materials.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 work, containing this brief excerpt from the unpublished work,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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-- 
Prof. Steven D. Jamar                                 vox:  202-806-8017
Howard University School of Law                       fax:  202-806-8428
2900 Van Ness Street NW                         
mailto:mailto:stevenjamar[_at_]gmail.com
Washington, DC  20008      http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar

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