Re: self plagiarism

This is in response to Micah Stolowitz's comments:

Although I think it is possible for an author to infringe the copyright he or she has assigned to another person, I believe you are wrong that the courts would treat an allegedly infringing author exactly the same way they would treat another infringer. The case of Dashiell Hammett who sold rights to the Maltese Falcon to a motion picture company, but later, down on his luck, started writing stories for radio broadcast using characters from the Maltese Falcon is a case in point. The court did not say it was giving Hammett more room to appropriate from his work than it would give others, but it bent over backwards to construe the agreement as not going so far, and I think the same would be true in other cases. I believe authors have more fair use rights to use portions of their works than other authors would have. If an author tries to undermine the interests that he or she sold to someone else (essentially trying to sell the same thing twice), I think courts would not put up with it. But I can conceive of many examples in which authors would be able to reuse portions of their work elsewhere in ways that did not harm the publisher's interests.

I have always had a hard time with the spelling of plagiarim too, but this is the correct spelling, and if I don't succeed at persuading you, Micah, at least I may have added a new proper spelling to your collection.

Pamela Samuelson
Professor of Law
University of Pittsburgh
psa2[_at_]vms.cis.pitt.edu Received on Mon Sep 27 1993 - 13:15:40 GMT