Re: anonymous copyright

On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Mikus Grinbergs <mikus[_at_]bga.com> wrote:
>
> When the author of a work is expressly identified as "Anonymous",
> does that affect the copyright in that work?
>
> [I was on the Board of Editors of an organization. We published
> an anthology of poetry in which the author of one of the poems
> was listed as "Anonymous". We knew who the author was, but the
> author had requested to be listed as "Anonymous" because of the
> intensely personal subject matter of the poem.]

In order to protect oneself when using work whose author is unidentifiable or anonymous, it is sound practice to post a notice stating that unsucessful endeavours have been made to contact the copyright owner and indicate a willingness to negotiate a licence fee if someone identifies themselves as author and provides evidence of this. This is not however a defence to copyright infringement. So, from the information you have provided it appears that you have infringed copyright by publishing without a licence.

(If the work was supplied to you specifically for publication, with no conditions attached, the situation may be different) In your situation you are a little vulnerable, if, say,the book became a best seller and the author then wanted a licence fee or share of earnings. My suggestion would be to ask the author to sign a licence specifying a fee (if any) etc but if their identity is confidential you may suggest they enter it using a pseudonym, and acknowledge in the licence that it is a pseudonym. I've never done this but I think it would work.

Tara Gutman
BEYOND INTERNATIONAL FILM & TELEVISION
Sydney
<tara_gutman[_at_]beyond.com.au> Received on Fri Oct 15 1999 - 00:37:09 GMT