Transfer of copyright under 1909 Act

I have a few related questions about transfer of copyright under the 1909 Act.

Assume a scholarly journal regularly received submissions from authors and then published them in the journal. Further assume that the authors' manuscripts did not have copyright notice, and/or that deposit and registration of those manuscripts was never done.

1. Under the 1909 Act, was the authors' agreement to have the journal publish the article treated as a transfer/asignment of the authors' copyright?
2. If yes, and if the journal also did not affix copyright notice, did the publication of the article in journal form cause the copyright to fall into the public domain?
3. If yes, and the journal did in fact affix copyright notice, does the journal then still own copyright in the article?
4. If no (the permision to publish did not convey the authors' copyright), is that right still extant for "unpublished" works? Is the former common law copyright still available to those authors (or their heirs and estates) for works created in 1910? Or, will it have fallen inot the public domain?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Joe Bauer

Prof. Joseph P. Bauer
Notre Dame Law School
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Phone: 219-631-6514 FAX: 219-631-4197
<joseph.p.bauer.1[_at_]nd.edu> Received on Wed Nov 25 1998 - 16:14:29 GMT