Ulysses Copyright

Dear List Members:

     The U.K. copyright in James Joyce's Ulysses was recently mentioned here in the context of the EU Directive that extended copyright protection "retrospectively," as the British say, to certain works. This indeed happened with Ulysses, which had fallen into the U.K. public domain in January 1992 and was pulled back into copyright in 1996. An Irish Joyce scholar, Danis Rose, published an Irish and British edition of Ulysses in 1997 under the "reliance" clause of the Directive, which provides that certain projects undertaken during the public-domain interval can be printed, with future printings to be negotiated with the copyright owner.

     List members may be interested in the even more complex situation of the American "copyright" in Ulysses, which I have recently argued never in fact existed (with a couple of minor exceptions) as a result of Joyce's inability to comply with the 1909 Act's manufacturing requirements. The question of the Ulysses copyright in America is especially urgent now that existing copyright terms have been extended by 20 years here. Those interested may wish to consult my Note, "Copyright Protectionism and Its Discontents: The Case of James Joyce Ulysses in America," YALE LAW JOURNAL, Vol. 108, No. 3 (December 1998), 633-67.

     Sincerely,
     Robert Spoo
     <robert.spoo[_at_]yale.edu>