On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 6:03 AM, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
It is settled case law in the US that restorations are not copyrightable as they lack sufficient originality. The intent is to create a slavish copy of the original work. Even if it takes a great deal of skill and judgment to do that, there are insufficient grounds for copyright in the US system.
This may not be the case in other jurisdictions (such as the UK) which place a greater emphasis on effort in determining eligibility for copyright.
-Robert Rohde
What case(s) settled this issue? I haven't been able to find anything credible one way or the other, but a number of organizations without an obvious financial interest in the issue seem to assume that restorations do create new copyrights.
Hhmmmm. I may have been mistaken. I distinctly recall a case with a fact pattern directly on point, involving a copyright claim in a work that was restored via a restorer's technical skill and judgment to create a "reproduction" of a original master's work that had been degraded over time, and that the restorer was denied copyright. However, I am not able to locate such a case upon searching. I suppose I may be misremembering (or it is possible I am remembering a case that is not US).
For the US, I would say the logic of Bridgeman vs. Corel makes plain that technical skill in copying is insufficient for copyright; however, it is not directly on point since it didn't directly address the issue of restorations.
-Robert Rohde