[WikiEN-l] Are movie trailers "free enough" for Commons?

[Sam Blacketer]

On 9/8/08, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> However, such a falling into the public domain may not include
> anything in the work that is a derivative work of another.  There's
> one movie, for instance (I forget the title) that fell into the public
> domain (I think through non-renewal) and was shown by many TV stations
> under the assumption that it could be done without permission;
> however, the novel on which the movie was based was properly renewed,
> and a court ruled that such of the derivative work that was based on
> the original, and still copyrighted, work was still under copyright.


The one you're thinking of is the Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life",
which was a movie adaptation of the story "The Greatest Gift" by Philip Van
Doren Stern.

That, I think, is the argument here.  Is the trailer a completely
> separate beast as regards copyright law or is it a derivative of the
> movie?


I may be misremembering but I thought that film trailers are normally
copyrighted, but that the copyright owner licences use in any context in
order to promote the film.

-- 
Sam Blacketer