[Hornlist] Copyright Law, Myth, Opinion, and the Public Domain

[Bo Gusman]

And, as Kopprasch is
published by a certain company, it is still under copyright as long as
this particular company exists, e.g. Breitkopf  Haertel published (and
edited) pieces before 1800. These pieces are still sold by the same
company. So they are under copyright protection, no matter the author
died over hundred years ago.
 

Copyright law is complex. Consult a lawyer.
According to my IP attorney, the creator of a work owns the copyright to 
the original (and derivative) work based on the date of first creation, 
not publication. That copyright ends at some point after his death, 
currently 70 years according to US copyright law (which is consistent 
with international law). The copyright holder can assign his rights to 
some other entity, but that does not change the date at which the 
copyright expires. If there are multiple authors, the expiration is life 
of the longest lived + 70 years. If a corporation creates the work, 
expiration is the shorter of 95 years after first publication or 120 
years after creation.

Under current law (US and International), since Kopprasch is dead, lo 
these many years, the copyright on his exercises has expired. Insofar as 
BH did not create the original work but merely published it, and 
regardless of any assignment that Kopprasch may have made to them, their 
edition is in the public domain.

   Bo
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Re: [Hornlist] Copyright Law, Myth, Opinion, and the Public Domain

[Matt Pollack]

Be careful.  Bo's post is correct right up until the end.  A publisher's 
edition of an old work may still be protected by copyright law to some 
extent--even though the original work is in the public domain.  If the 
publisher added any creative elements to the work (anything from 
explanatory notes to new or different musical notation), the publisher 
is the author of those added elements, and those added elements would be 
copyrighted as if it was new work of the publisher (95 years from 
publication, in the U.S., I believe). 

The original work would still be in the public domain.   The trouble, 
however, can be in determining what is the original work and what is the 
new added elements.  Because almost all publishers add something to 
works they publish, wholesale photocopying of a publisher's edition is 
very risky.

Take an easy example.  In high school, we read some Shakespeare plays 
with quite extensive footnotes to explain things (and I still didn't 
understand most of it!).  Although Shakespeare's works are in the public 
domain, I could not have legally copied the book we read, because it had 
the publisher's annotations in it.  I could have, however, hand-copied 
the actual Shakespeare work, and then distributed it as I wanted.

Matt Pollack
Lawyer (but not specialist in copyright law--it's just a hobby of mine)
Amateur Horn player
Topsham, Maine
USA
Bo Gusman wrote:
Copyright law is complex. Consult a lawyer.
[snip]
Under current law (US and International), since Kopprasch is dead, lo 
these many years, the copyright on his exercises has expired. Insofar 
as BH did not create the original work but merely published it, and 
regardless of any assignment that Kopprasch may have made to them, 
their edition is in the public domain.

   Bo

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