On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 6:03 AM, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Robert Rohde
<rarohde(a)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