While copyright can be very complex and confusing, the parts of copyright law that usually apply to genealogy are really pretty basic. There are a few fundamentals that can help deal with just about any genealogy copyright situation.
Making a copy of a work or a portion of a work is its author’s copy right.In the U.S., the right to make a copy of a protected work is a constitutional, exclusive right of the work’s author, except that some limited copying is allowed by provisions of the copyright law. (see fair use)
Copyright protection subsists… in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.For works created before today, there are a few basic durations and conditions for determining copyright status:
Census takers, for instance, don’t create the data that result from their work. They write down the facts that they discover. Census data, therefore, can’t be copyrighted because it’s not original.
Since facts can’t be original expression, the copyright of any work doesn’t extend to the facts contained within it. This is a very important fundamental concept in genealogy, since genealogy so very much involves the pursuit, discovery, and collection of facts.
While copyright doesn’t extend to facts, the facts may be expressed in an original fashion. When this occurs, the original expression used to convey the facts is protected, but the underlying facts are not.
The copyright status of already existing material doesn’t change when used in a new work. If an author uses material from the work of someone else, the copyright for the material still belongs to the original author. If something from the public domain is used, its copyright status is that it’s still in the public domain, available for anyone to use.
U.S. government developed material, by law, cannot be copyrighted. However, material created by non-government authors and used by the government is usually covered by the author's copyright. In either case, though, use in a new work does not change the copyright status for U.S. government materials.
Many genealogy compilations aren’t sufficiently original to be protected by copyright. Since facts can’t be copyrighted, to be eligible for copyright protection, a factual compilation must have some amount of originality in either the selection of the facts, the arrangement of the facts or both. And, then, the only part of the compilation that’s protected will be that which has originality.
Example:
Joe records the names, dates and inscriptions of all of the headstones in the Farnham East Cemetery. He arranges them in three tables. The first is alphabetical by last name, the second chronological by date of death, and the third arranged by the relationship of the location of the headstone to a large oak tree in the middle of the cemetery. As well, in the third, he only includes the headstones of people who died in even numbered years.Of the three tables, the first two used all of the names and dates and arranged them in standard formats, alphabetical and chronological. If “all” of an available quantity of facts is used, there is no originality of selection. If a standard format is used for the arrangement and ordering of facts, then there is no originality of arrangement.
Only in the third table is the selection and arrangement of the material original enough to be protected by copyright. Defining and describing the location of a headstone by relationship to something else applies originality in the arrangement of the facts. Selecting only those that died in even numbered years is a nonstandard way to select the information that will be included.
However, the copyright protection for the compilation of facts in the third table applies only to the selection and the arrangement of the facts. To copy the selection and arrangement of the facts would be to infringe upon the right of copy belonging to the author. However, the facts that are included in the compilation aren’t protected and may be used by anyone.
And they can.
So long as they don’t make it available to others, so long as they don’t publish it.
But that’s the only way that it can be protected. Once it’s made available to others, such a work will have little or no copyright protection in most instances.
Under copyright, the effort and work put into a project means nothing. Copyright only protects an author’s “original expression.”
In the past, lower courts have made “sweat of the brow” and “industrious collection” rulings, where the work and effort that went into the research, collecting and arranging counted in the copyright protection of a work. However, such rulings were invariably overturned by higher courts. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed and further defined the requirement for the author’s original expression in a word being all that’s protected.
The principle of fair use, which allows limited copying without consent, limits the conflict. Its limits intentionally ill-defined, fair use is very applicable to scholarship and research, important aspects of genealogy. Four factors are considered:
Examples:
Joe is doing research at the Mid America Library in Independence, Missouri. He finds transcripts of four 18th century wills on pages 21, 23, and 87 of a book of deeds and wills from Virginia that is copyrighted 1979. He makes a copy of each of the pages that has the information he needs. He subsequently posts the text of each of the four wills online.
He also finds a little narrative family history book that was published in 1955 on the family of his great, great, great, granduncle. He copies the entire book and publishes it online.
In a third book, copyrighted in 1934, he finds several pages narrating the life of one his wife’s ancestors. He copies the pages and posts small, significant portions from them online.Which of the three examples was fair use?
Only the third.
In the first one, there is no potential for copyright infringement. While the book is copyrighted 1979, at best the copyright applies to the selection and arrangement of the information. If the book is sequenced the same as the original will book or covered time period and all of the documents available are included, then there is no originality.
A true transcript of a will is no more than a printed copy of an existing document. While knowledge and interpretation may be needed to be able to read the old handwriting, there is no creative expression involved… and therefore no copyright involved.
In the second example, the book had no copyright date. It was published in 1955 without proper copyright notice. Therefore, the book is in the public domain and Joe can do anything with it he wants to.
If, however, the book included a proper copyright notice, it might still have been under copyright protection if the author had renewed the copyright. In that case, copying the book would probably not have been a fair use and posting the entire work online definitely would not have been.
Joe copied several pages out of a book, in the third example, that were applicable to his research. Assuming the book is still under copyright:
This article is available for free distribution and reprint as a public service from the author provided:
(1) it is not edited and these conditions appear on all copies,
including print.
(2) a link is provided to http://stellar-one.com/copyright.htm
if the article is used in a web page on another site.