Re: Aphorisms and Copyright

On 8/21/98, Timothy Phillips <hrothgar[_at_]telepath.com> wrote:
>
> Daniel Schaeffer <daniel_schaeffer[_at_]kirkland.com> wrote:
> >
> > You can't be sure of that. If I own a copyright in a collection of
> > my aphorisms, and you snag one of them for a T-shirt, I can make a
> > prima facie case of copyright infringement -- you directly copied
> > part of my copyrighted work. You may have a fair use defense, but
> > it's not a lock. (You're not going to claim that the copyright in
> > a book does not protect against partial copying, are you?)
>
> Copyright only extends to the COPYRIGHTABLE features of the work.
>
> If the melody of "Old Hundredth" in a modern songbook is the same melody
> that appeared in the 16th-century metrical psalters, then it can be
> copied from the modern songbook just as it could be from an original
> copy of one of the 16th-century books. The public domain is public
> wherever it occurs, however fresh be the ink. The opposite conclusion
> stinks of the "sweat of the brow" concept which was rejected in cases
> like Suid v. Newsweek and finally ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme
> Court in Feist v. Rural Telephone.
>
> If aphorisms are not individually copyrightable, then placing them in a
> compilation doesn't protect them individually. Even the "Collections of
> Information Antipiracy Act" falsely so-called, if it becomes law, will
> not protect a SINGLE aphorism if single aphorisms are not copyrightable
> in themselves.

Sorry about my imprecise language. When I wrote "a collection of my aphorisms," I meant my *original* aphorisms. If I put a bunch of my original aphorisms into a book, I'm pretty confident the book overall would be viewed as an "original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium" and a "literary work" as that term is defined in the Copyright Act. I did not mean to imply that a compilation copyright would protect an individual aphorism.

If my collection were a bunch of other people's aphorisms, a la Bartlett's Quotations, then your point would be correct.

Daniel J. Schaeffer
<daniel_schaeffer[_at_]kirkland.com> Received on Sat Aug 22 1998 - 14:29:21 GMT