Re: Public Domain and Derivative Works

On 6/11/98, Tim Phillips <hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> wrote:

>

Well, as long as copyright professionals continue to ignore the database protection bill HR 2652, and if this bill becomes law, the answer will be that a microform publisher will be able to call the mircroforms a database, sue the "misappropriator" 3000 miles from where the person lives, finds a federal judge who thinks this is bad, get an injunction, select various ways to draw and quarter the misapropriator including seizing all of their business assets, and if it turns out an appellate court thinks otherwise, it will not have mattered because the so-called misappropriator will have a destroyed business.

Copyright law after the database bill will mean that only the original copy of work can ever enter the public domain. But copies of the public domain work, if presented in anything that can be characterized as a collection of information, will be subject to protection.

Alan D. Sugarman
<sugarman[_at_]hyperlaw.com> Received on Fri Jun 12 1998 - 13:39:51 GMT