Joseph P. Riolo <riolo[_at_]voicenet.com> wrote:
>
> I do not know Wells 1985 edition of Shakespeare's works and I do not
> have any copy of it. Based on others' discussions, it seems that the
> majority of the edition comes from the public domain materials. If
> that is correct, then, Oxford University Press can claim copyright
> only in the small parts of the edition that do not come from the
> public domain materials such as the footnotes, introduction, side
> bars, and so on. How much money and time Wells spent on the edition
> does not matter at all, because the copyright law only recognizes
> the author.
Since OUP have a global market (with significant sales in the UK and other non-US English speaking countries), they can claim published edition copyright, a thin copyright in the arrangement of the pages lasting only 25 years, in the whole book. That claim overstates their rights in the US but not in the UK (or a number of other English speaking countries).
-- | Tim Arnold-Moore, LL.B., B.Sc. (Hons) | Postal address: Multimedia Database Systems, RMIT | 723 Swanston St | Carlton 3053 | AUSTRALIA | Tel: +61 3 9282 2487 | Fax: +61 3 9282 2490 | simul iustus et peccator <tja[_at_]mds.rmit.edu.au>Received on Thu Jul 23 1998 - 04:07:58 GMT
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