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

[geni]

2008/9/8 Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com>:
> 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.

It's a wonderful life. And you are over simplifying. The film is PD.
The book isn't so any elements of the film taken from the book are
protected as they come under the book's copyright. This means plot
elements. Screenshots of the film however tend to be PD. However in
this case the book was very firmly published first.

Not however decisive case law since generally the copyright on a
trailer and on a film would be held by the same company.


> 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?

Neither.



-- 
geni