Public Domain Works
Every writer, fiction or nonfiction, should be familiar with a central tenet of copyright law: the doctrine of “public domain” work. Public domain works are, simply, anything NOT protected by copyright. Such works may be used freely by anyone without permission. The numerous changes Congress has made in the term of copyright duration, however, has made it difficult to determine the copyright...
Read MoreEstate Planning FAQ
Why should I pay a lawyer a lot of money for some simple documents? You can buy software that produces most of the estate planning documents an attorney will prepare for you. Using such documents could turn out all right for you and your heirs, but things could go horribly wrong as well, and you’ll never know if you did it right until it’s too late. You could end up paying a nursing...
Read MoreSOPA and PIPA
With the recent publicity about the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), it’s an opportune time to review the existing remedies for online copyright infringement in the United States (remedies for sites hosted in other countries are different, and beyond the scope of this article.) First, I recommend that all published authors routinely take the...
Read MoreQ&A: Reversion of Rights
Q. I wrote my (ex) publisher asking for reversion of my rights for my out of print books. The time period specified in the contract has passed and I still haven’t heard back. I sent an email referencing the letter and my request and got no response to that, either. In that email I said that the lack of a response made me assume the rights were now mine. Is this sufficient? A. If you...
Read MoreAuthor’s Guild Lawsuit
The Author’s Guild has become quite litigious in recent years. The Guild’s lawsuit against Google for its Google Books project continues, and will go to trial sometime next year. Meanwhile, the Guild, along with Australian and Canadian authors’ organizations and eight individual authors, has filed another high-profile lawsuit, this time against the HathiTrust, a partnership of major research...
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