Claire Tatro is an intern this summer with the Copyright Office here at Michigan Publishing. Claire is a student at the University of Michigan School of Information (M.A. 2014). She is working on a series of highlights about books in the public domain in HathiTrust. Punch and Judy, with twenty-four illustrations designed and engraved by George Cruikshank. And other plates accompanied by the dialogue of the puppet-show, and account of its origin, and of puppet…
Yes, that’s pi as in 3.14. One of the frequent questions that comes up in my work involves confusion over whether facts and data are subject to US Copyright: they are not. Original expressions or arrangements of facts can, however, be subject to copyright protection. A recent case helps make the distinction clear – and also shows how the same facts can result in completely different and wonderful expressions. In Erickson v. Blake a composer created…
With last week’s flurry of activity over SOPA/PIPA, perhaps you missed the Supreme Court’s decision in Golan v. Holder [PDF]. The opinion makes it unequivocally clear that it is well within the purview of Congress to remove works from the public domain and reinforces the Court’s opinion in Eldred regarding Congress’s authority to extend copyright duration. In one fell swoop, the majority managed to express a legal opinion out of touch with technological and social…
Library Journal featured the IMLS-funded MLibrary work on the Copyright Review Management System. The article explains the work being undertaken by Michigan and the collaborative contributions by several partner libraries, and has some good quotes by our own Anne Karle-Zenith. Perhaps most importantly, it highlights the value of the work in providing access to substantial numbers of post-1922 US works that we have now determined to be in the public domain.