Re: State Susceptibility to Suit for Copyright and Patent Infringement

On 03, August 1998, Dan L. Burk <burkdanl[_at_]shu.edu> wrote:
>
> On 7/31/98, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 98-07-31, Dan L. Burk <burkdanl[_at_]shu.edu> writes:
> > >
> > > It would be, but probably isn't. Setting aside the merits of the
> > > suit (Raphael long ago fell into the public domain)
> >
> > It doesn't work this way. Museums have a right to control
> > activiities on their premises.
>
> Yes, but how is that relevant to the question that was posed? Once
> the image is off the premises, there is very little that the museum
> can do to control third party usage of the public domain elements
> in the image.
>
> > The situation is similar to that of translations of literary works.
> > Plato is in the public domain. Last year's English translation of
> > <The Republic> isn't. If I decide to do my own translation, I have
> > to deal with the institution that owns the physical copy of the
> > manuscript. There may be fees involved, and I can't assume they'll
> > allow just anyone to touch it or have photocopies. I suppose the
> > Dead Sea scrolls are in the public domain. That doesn't mean I can
> > have unrestricted access, and I can't have access at all unless the
> > owner or holder allows it.
>
> To take your example of the scrolls, there are enough images of the
> scrolls and fragments floating around for someone to do their own
> translation without access to the originals -- which in fact has
> happened, making the posessors of the originals extremely unhappy,
> but too bad. As with any control of IP based on exclusion,
> competitors will find ways to reverse engineer the product if the
> price is right.
>
> Along the same lines, I exchanged some correspondence a while back
> with one of the principals in the project at Brigham Young University
> to put images of the scrolls out on CD ROM. They wanted to know how
> they could protect their interest in the collection of images. One
> of the problems that I tried (probably unsucessfully) to get across
> to them was that once the images are out there, they're out there,
> and the public domain elements are fair game for whoever wants to
> extract them. Someone in that situation can try to block access with
> a UCC2b-type adhesion contract, but so far that only seems to work if
> the case gets before Frank Easterbrook.

Plato's works are available in "modern" editions of varying newness from Oxford University Press. A translation from any of these may have to be cleared by OUP, but I doubt it.

Michael A Scarpitti
Assistant Editor
Materials Evaluation
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PO Box 28518
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<mscarpit[_at_]asnt.org> Received on Tue Aug 04 1998 - 15:04:50 GMT