On Mon, 15 Dec 2008, Kenneth P. Stox wrote:

K3HVG wrote:
Tio Pedro wrote:
Apparently Heath has sold the rights to its legacy
equipment, including manual copyrights. All of the
Heathkit equipment manuals are pulled from BAMA
and from several other web resources! This sucks.


Pete


I wonder when the these copyrights will expire? I assume they will?

Not in our lifetimes.

Actually, there seems to have been a period when things could fall out
of copyright. Not the obvious early 1900's, but around fifty years ago.

Jeff Duntemann (who wrote a great article in "73" way back in 1974
about the time he advertised for old electronic junk) wrote about
this on his blog a few months ago,
http://jeff-duntemann.livejournal.com/134918.html

This accounts for that webpage with old technical books on it, they
really do seem to have fallen out of copyright. Jeff mentions books
like Don Stoner's SSB manual that was published by CQ about fifty
years ago, as an example.

Note there is a window when this could happen, and it requires
that nobody renewed the copyright. So it's not automatic.

Michael VE2BVW