In article ,
John Smith wrote:

Actually, I correct myself again, it looks like Termans' book is expired
copyright, if you look closely at the post above and the field:
" Claim Limit: NEW MATTER: "revisions and new material." "
you will see that this entry is actually a NEW copyright work, and that the
copyright is limited to ONLY the "revisions and new material."
However, as this guy (corporation, company, business, individual, etc.) has
done, a person could duplicate the "original text" of Terman without
violation of copyright law, AND also tag on some "new revisions and new
material" just to obsfucate what has been done! and obtain a copyright on
the "revisions and new material"-- fooling some into believing the old text
was still copyrighted...

At least, from consulting with others who claim to be more familiar with
such, that is the conclusion I draw.

That isn't necessarily due to any intent to obfuscate the situation.

US Copyright law says that if a work is in the public domain, the work
itself cannot be re-copyrighted. However, anyone can then create a
"derivative work", using the public-domain work as starting material,
and then copyright the resulting derivative work. If, for example,
you start with a black&white news photo which is in the public domain,
do some simple Photoshop or GIMP processing on it to colorize it (or
include it in a collage or photomontage) you can copyright your own
version of the photo. The original photo remains in the public
domain, while your version (with your creative effort) is now
copyrighted.

As another analogy, one could take the text of Moby Dick (in the
public domain and freely available on the Net) and run it through a
creatively-programmed "English to Valley-speak" or "English to Jive"
translation filter. The result would probably be copyrightable, if
rather silly.

There are, I believe, various legal rules-of-thumb to determine
whether the creative effort involved in making a derivative work is
sufficient to support its being placed under a new copyright.

It's very possible (almost certain, in fact) that the 1983 version of
Terman involved sufficient creative effort to revise and enhance the
text of the 1955 edition, to justify the new version having its own
copyright.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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