2007/1/24, Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com:
If I draw a picture of something, and you come along and take a photograph of it, then by your reasoning you would own the copyright in it. What happened to my copyright? Did it magically disappear when you took the picture?
Nope. Your hand-drawn picture is a piece of creative work in which you own copyright. Referring to Bridgeman, which *does* apply to this circumstance, though I'm still not convinced it's generally applicable because I haven't read the case -- the summary suggests it doesn't cover enough to apply generally to the issue on point -- if I made a photograph of your drawing which was purposefully a clean reproduction with no artistic modification, then any copyright that would inhere in my photograph would be yours.
If, however, I took a picture of you standing next to your framed drawing hanging on your wall, there would most certainly be copyrightable expression in my photograph that was not solely derivative of your copyright in your work.
Watch your use of the word 'solely'. If it is a slavish copy, it's the copyright of the original author. If it is just a minor thing on a larger photograph, it is copyright of the photographer (with the image being fair use or some similar defense). In cases in-between, there might well be a double copyright - when you make that picture in such a way that (say) the picture is half of the photograph, and then someone goes and publishes that photograph, he might well be infringing on BOTH your AND my copyright.
In reality, I still have my copyright in the picture, and your
photograph is a derivative work, which in the absence of a licence for you to create derivative works, I also own the copyright to.
*To the extent that there's no creative input of mine in my photograph*.
No, to the extent that the photograph is a derivative work of the picture.
If A owns the copyright in software/etc, and B takes apicture of it, then in the absence of a licence permitting B to use the software/etc to create derivative works, A owns the copyright in the picture. What your rights are when you take a picture is determined by what licence you had to use the original thingy you took a picture of.
I assert that a copyright in the *program code* to Microsoft Word does *not* constitute a copyright in *the millions of different possible visual displays that program could produce* -- especially when you consider that those displays can differ markedly based on the choices of system fonts and color themes chosen by the computer's operator.
Well, there must be a creative act on the side of Microsoft and its programmers. Whether there are such decisions of any importance, or the choices are all either caused by the nature of being a text editor or otherwise non-creative, is something for the judge to decide - although the more likely outcome, I think, would be that the judge finds "no reasonable case of damage". Actual speaking in favor of Microsoft would probably only have chances if the outlook of Microsoft Word would be copied quite precisely by another text editor program.
You got any cases that suggest that interpretation is incorrect?
Statutes, even?