[Foundation-l] Wikimedian image restorations exploited on eBay

[Robert Rohde]

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