March 6, 1996
Authors don't always assign their copyrights to publishers. I pulled a few titles at random from my bookshelf to check copyright notices. The following examples represent about half of the titles I checked:
o The copyright notice in "The Internet Guide
for New Users," published by McGraw-Hill in
1994, identifies the author (Daniel P. Dern)
as the copyright holder.
o For "Simplicity & Complexity in Games of the
Intellect," published by Harvard University
Press, the copyright is held by the author,
Lawrence B. Slobodkin.
o Marina V.N. Whitman holds the renewal copyright
in "The Computer and the Brain," written by her
father, the late John von Neumann, and published
by Yale University Press.
o Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister hold the copyright
for their book, "Peopleware: Productive Projects
and Teams," published by Dorset House Publishing
Company.
o John A. Barry holds the copyright on "Technobabble,"
published by The MIT Press.
o Martin van Creveld holds the copyright in his book,
"The Transformation of War," published by The Free
Press, a division of MacMillan, Inc.
The copyrights for the rest of the titles were held by the publishers.
Chris Wren
cgwren[_at_]wisconsinlaw.com
At 04:39 PM 3/4/96 -0800, Christine Sundt <csundt[_at_]oregon.uoregon.edu> wrote:
>
> One point of confusion? -- Isn't it the copyright owner (read
> "publisher") who actually gets these rights? Once copyright is
> assigned to the publisher, it appears to me that the author hasn't
> much to hold onto, except the possibility that a new spark of
> creativity will occur and lead to another work that can be passed
> onto a publisher who then owns the rights... Is this the original
> chicken and egg issue?
Received on Wed Mar 06 1996 - 20:47:18 GMT
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