Re: Michigan case draws

From: Donald Berman <berman[_at_]ccs.neu.edu>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 09:05:00 -0500 (EST)

I would agree with Alan - could Emory make that claim if they stored in a Wordperfect or Word File that used distinctive codes? Yet there does exist a far out case that arguably protect West's pagination. This seems diferent because Emory makes no claim that there HTML representation does anything more that accurately reflect what the court distributed.

  Don Berman --  

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> > Alan Sugarman wrote:

> > 

> > But remember ... Emory copyrights the HTML version of this opinion 

> > and you may not use if for commercial purposes ... at least that is
> > what Emory Law School claims.
>
> There can be no special copyright in an "HTML version" of any public
> domain work.
>
> Here is the above paragraph in an HTML version:
>
> But remember ... Emory copyrights the HTML version of this opinion<br>
> and you may not use if for commercial purposes ... at least that is<br>
> what Emory Law School claims.<p>
>
> Here is the same paragraph in another HTML version:
>
> <pre>
> But remember ... Emory copyrights the HTML version of this opinion
> and you may not use if for commercial purposes ... at least that is
> what Emory Law School claims.
> </pre>
>
> The various possible HTML tags are all utilitarian, completely without
> originality. They specify line breaks, paragraph indents, fonts, etc.
> The idea that one can wrap a public domain text in HTML tags and have
> the total copyright protected is idiotic, and Emory University is doing
> the public a great disservice with spurious copyright claims -- and from
> a law school! What exactly do they think is protected? The placement
> of the tags?
>
>
> Dan Agin
> ===========================================
> Spectrum Press Inc.
> http://users.aol.com/specpress/index.html
> 71022.251[_at_]compuserve.com
Received on Fri Mar 15 1996 - 14:05:43 GMT