...As I discuss in footnote 12 of the copyright duration chart...a ruling in the Twin Books v Walt Disney case in the 9th Circuit (covering the western states) contradicts what everyone else assumes. In Twin Books, the court concluded that if a foreign work did not follow the requirements to secure copyright protection in the US, the work did not therefore enter the public domain in the US, but instead remained in effect unpublished for the purposes of US copyright law....
[A recent case, Societe Civile Succession Richard Guino v Renoir, criticized Twin Books without overturning it.]
The decision makes it much, much harder to determine whether a book published abroad is in the public domain....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/05/2009 11:46:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
