RE: The erroneous publisher copyright registration

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The issues here comes down to a) fixing the incorrect registration (which, as far as I can tell, can be done with a CA form altho the copyright office will show both registrations) and b) convincing the Trustee that the book which didn't sell well and that was 15 years ago isn't much of an asset and he should let the rights go back to the author. I'm going to see how one does that. It's not a claim in bankruptcy because there's no debt owed.

The contract does not have a rights reversion clause, a bankruptcy rights reversion clause, or an OP clause which means that unless the Trustee is willing to disaffirm the agreement, author's stuck until and unless the rights are either sold to another company.

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Carol

-- 
Carol A. Busby
Attorney at Law
141 W. 39th Avenue
Eugene, OR  97405
541-484-6860; fax: 541-338-7155
carol[_at_]drogon.com

When there are a lot of people that are owed more money than there are
assets, I would hope that the trustee would be reluctant to rule that
ANY possible asset wasn't worth anything and should be given back to the
creator.  I would think that the best thing would be for the client to
either wait until somebody ends up with "everything else" and offer to
buy the rights back, quite possibly on the cheap.  

Or, you could try to sue for the monetary difference in value between
the copyright assignment agreed to and the Work-Made-For-Hire that was
fraudulently claimed.  I suspect that the valuation of would revolve
around the expected income stream 35years after publication.  On the one
hand, the trustee might decide that this was an additional headache
easily avoided.  On the other hand, this would tend to persuade the
trustee and whoever ended up with the remaining assets that the assigned
rights were ACTUALLY WORTH something and should be bargained over.
Probably not the way to go.  But of course this tactic would result in a
lot more billable hours. ;-)