Re: I beg your pardon: copyright ownership

[adam hodgkin <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>]

I thought Joe Esposito's original posting was clearer than his subsequent
response reveals it to have been. Strictly speaking authors do NOT usually
assign their copyrights to the publisher and this is the key point. Fifty
or a hundred years ago, and more recently in journal publishing, it was
fairly common for authors to assign their copyrights to the publisher.
This is why one usually now sees the author named as the copyright holder
when a book or article is published. Standard practice now is for authors
to retain the copyright and license certain rights flowing from the
copyright to the publisher. In this respect the rights of a publisher in
this regard (with respect to the ultimate ownership of the intellectual
property) are not very different from the rights that Google may have or
acquire. Authors are in the king position.

Most property rights in the work which have not been explicitly granted to
the publisher by the author or copyright holder probably reside with the
author and copyright holder.

This matter is important because it constrains the publishers negotiating
position with Google. Many publishers will be uncertain whether they are
in a position to negotiate with Google for a share of the revenue from
Google advertising (especially for books they published fifty years ago
before electronic distribution rights were considered) and their contracts
with their authors may be unclear as to the percentage of any such
revenues that would be due to the authors even supposing that the
publisher has the right to make the deal.

Its also important because Publishers do clearly have a copyright claim in
the typographical arrangement of the author's work. This is relevant in the
Google case for two reasons. First the Google process uses the publisher's
copyright intimately with its page by page scanning and copying. The
typographical arrangement of the copy that Google is making is undoubtedly
the publishers in most cases (its pagination and formatting etc) so the
conventional wisdom is that Google really should be seeking the publisher's
permission for this. Second it is relevant because Google itself is, in its
agreement with the University of Michigan, seeking to establish a claim of
ownership (thin as it may be) to the 'Google Copy' of the work to which
certain rights also attach in respect of the 'U of Michigan Copy' and in the
case of 'in copyright works' certain prior rights attach to the author and
to the publisher. Google's claim to certain rights in 'their' copy looks
rather similar to the publisher's claim to a 'copyright in the typography'
of a work as it is presented and arranged on the page.

Adam


On 8/18/05, Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:

> " Joe Esposito points out that publishers do not usually own the
> copyrights that they assert and whose rights they depend on."
> I never said any such thing. I said authors typically transfer most of
> the rights to publishers. In such cases (most cases) publishers own the
> rights. The nature of the business deals varies, though there are
> conventions in certain segments of the industry. Trade publishers, for
> example, rarely get the film rights from authors. Publishers assert the
> rights that they own.
> --
> Joe Esposito