Re: Copyright of Independent Creation

["Prof. Michael H. Davis" <michael.davis@law.csuohio.edu>]

I don't know what project Guttenberg is but it's not good law to say
that two works, definitely produced independently, as long as they are
copyrightable, would not yield two distinct copyrights. They obviously
would, under copyright doctrine so essential to the law that to ignore
it would be to gut copyright of all its force--not a bad thing, of
course. I don't know what you mean by the mathematical odds--if you're
saying there is doubt about the independent nature of the creation, then
the issue is no longer independent creation and the answer is
necessarily different.
Mickey Davis

Michael S. Hart wrote:
> 
> I have discussed this with our legal advisors,
> who are both lawyers, law professors, and heads
> of their university law libraries and I stand by
> my original statement that the works produced by
> Project Gutenberg would NOT be covered by two
> independent copyrights if two people claimed to
> have independently produced them, and no one
> could prove otherwise. . .the mathematical odds
> alone would eliminate such consideration even
> if the old copyrights were still in force.
> [Most of the works of Project Gutenberg are
> in the public domain, but not all.]
> 
> I don't know about something very short,
> such as "The Fog" by Carl Sandburg, but
> in our universe of Etexts, no one is going
> to get a new copyright for anything a long
> as our average Etext.
> 
> 
> Thanks for your patience while researching,
> 
> Michael
> 
> =============================================
> 
> Michael S. Hart, Professor of Electronic Text
> Benedictine University [Illinois Benedictine]
> Carnegie Mellon University Visiting Scientist
> 
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