Need to know something (copyright issues)

[kevin klein]

I was asked by someone who was contacted by the British Museum where thet can find a copy of the illustrations I used on my web site in the process section kevinklein.biz they want to use those for an exhibit they have coming up soon and do'nt know if there are copyright issues.

 

[Paul Sorensen]

Where did the images originally come from?

 

[Ian Grant]

It looks like the images your referring to are well out of copyright, so there shouldn't be any problems at all. There are plentyof books with similar illustrations that are well over 100 years old.

Ian

 

[smieglitz]

I originally thought they were from Desire Monckhoven's Treatise, but he has different illustrations. I bet an email to Mark Osterman at the GEH would get the answer for you. I think Mark and France used the same (?) illustrations in their wetplate manual.

 

[pgomena]

When I worked at the Oregon Historical Society, the copyright policy we used was that anything published in the U.S. before 1923 is in the public domain. Not sure about foreign copyright laws.

Peter Gomena

 

[Q.G.]

You can assume that foreign copyright laws adhere to the conventions of Bern.
A convention the U.S. is party to as well. So it should be the same.

 

[Aklens200]

Hi,
I believe the Bern Convention only covers US copyright from the time they signed on (around 1997), before that it is the old US Copyright laws that are followed.
From (around 1997 forward) the US follows the Bern Convention only, you can still regester your work with the US Copyright Office (about $US 40.00) though.
All info can be googled.
Rich

 

[Q.G.]

Copyright involves recognizing its duration, i.e. a period since the creation of an original work. You can't sign on to the Bern convention and not apply it because you only signed up a couple of years ago.

Registration of copyright, by the way, is not necessary. It is a 'birth right' that exists and is in your 'posession' the moment you create an original work.

 

[MkII]

If you can answer Paul's question (where did the images come from) you will be able to begin working out whether the images are in copyright. If the images are used in the UK, an author from a Berne country is entitled to claim the same protection as UK law gives to UK authors (Berne, Article 5). The UK gives life plus 70 years (sounds like a prison sentence!), meaning that a book that is 100 years old could quite easily be in copyright.

There are special, complicated rules governing US copyright term for works published prior to March 1989 (when the US joined Berne) and lawyers make a lot of money figuring them out.