Thick or Thin

Kenneth Crews writes (with respect to a hypothetical publisher's copyright in the layout of a book, the copyright in the text of which has reverted to the original author):
>
> If the publisher can prevent your copying your own text because of
> its control over the layout, etc, I see little reason in calling the
> copyright claim "thin."

     The copyright (if it exists) is "thin" precisely because the publisher CANNOT stop the author from copying his or her own text. All the publisher can stop is photocopying that particular layout of the text. If the author copies the text longhand, by typewriter, by inputting into a computer, or even by scanning electronically into something like ASCII that does not preserve the visual format of the book, none of the publisher's layout is taken and the hypothetical layout copyright is not infringed.

Dennis S. Karjala
Professor of Law
Arizona State University
Tempe, Arizona 85287
602-965-4010
602-965-2427 (fax)
dennis.karjala[_at_]asu.edu Received on Thu Apr 11 1996 - 17:27:52 GMT