Re: SCIENCE TODAY?

On 02/19/99, Shelly Warwick <swarwick[_at_]sprynet.com> wrote:
>
> Without repeating the long series of posts, what I'm maintaining
> is that if a work is unregistered the only means one has for
> determining authorship is the name of the author(s) on the work.
> Can someone be faulted from getting permission from a presumptive
> author? For instance if your article was placed on web and
> Mr. Naipul was indicated as the author and I requested permission
> to reprint the article from Mr. Naipul, who granted permission,
> can I be said to have infringed the work?

In theory, yes. Copyright is a strict liabilty offense, and innocent intent is not a defense (although it may affect the remedies available to the plaintiff). The statute requires authorization of the copyright owner, which is initially the author, not one falsely represented to be the author. However, as a practical matter I agree that a court would probably find that the real author was estopped to deny co-authorship in this instance.

But take a slightly different situation: A authors the work, but it is disseminated by B, with the caption indicating authorship by A and B. Getting permission from B won't keep you from being found to have infringed. So, you would want to get some sort of assurance or warranty from B initially; and if you're really cautious, you might want to investigate authorship before taking B's word for it.

> In short, if an unregistered work makes no claims to the
> contrary, it would seem logical to assume that the stated authors
> of the work are indeed the authors of the work for purposes of
> copyright. Naturally, a registered work would have clearly
> defined both the authors and copyright holder in the registration
> statement.

It is logical to assume that; and most of the time it will be correct. But it's still an assumption, and it won't keep you from being found to have infringed. [And for that matter, even the registration statement could be incorrect.]

Tyler T. Ochoa
Associate Professor
Whittier Law School
<tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> Received on Tue Feb 23 1999 - 02:50:26 GMT