Legal/copyright question?? (using quotations in book)

Mind if I ask a question about copyright here, also?

I was going over my contract yesterday, and it states that I am responsible for 'registering the copyright with the US Copyright office, including payment of any fees and the cost of preparing printed and/or electronic documentation of the work as required by the US Copyright office.' It also says that I am to provide a copy of the copyright certificate to the publisher.

Okay, this is where it gets hinky. It goes on to say that if I choose not to register the copyright, I may be limited in the damages that could be awarded in court if there is a copyright violation. Publisher will place a copyright notice on all versions of my mss., using the year of first release if no other information is available.

Huh?

Is it necessary to copyright it? And how would one go about doing so, anyway? How much does it cost, etc. And can you hear the sound of one hand clapping? Why or why not? (sorry, got a little carried away, there)

Any advice here would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hope I did not stomp on writingirish's question. I just figured that since we both have copyright ???'s

Thanks.

wannawrite said:

Mind if I ask a question about copyright here, also?

I was going over my contract yesterday, and it states that I am responsible for 'registering the copyright with the US Copyright office, including payment of any fees and the cost of preparing printed and/or electronic documentation of the work as required by the US Copyright office.' It also says that I am to provide a copy of the copyright certificate to the publisher.

Okay, this is where it gets hinky. It goes on to say that if I choose not to register the copyright, I may be limited in the damages that could be awarded in court if there is a copyright violation. Publisher will place a copyright notice on all versions of my mss., using the year of first release if no other information is available.

Huh?

Is it necessary to copyright it? And how would one go about doing so, anyway? How much does it cost, etc. And can you hear the sound of one hand clapping? Why or why not? (sorry, got a little carried away, there)

Any advice here would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hope I did not stomp on writingirish's question. I just figured that since we both have copyright ???'s

Thanks.

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Copyright protects you from being sued if someone ever takes you to court. I've talked to a lawyer recently myself and I will share what he told me.

He said: If you are building on someone's work, it is best to protect yourself by pulling your own work as far from theirs as you can. If things go into litigation, one thing you may be asked is where you got your ideas so that is something to think about and ask yourself in case it happens.

Now, one thing he told me is that it is best for you as a writer to copyright your manuscript yourself. This is because if the house publishing company does it they can claim more of the profit from your sales, he said in order to avoid that so that most of the profit goes to you, have the copyright in your name. Right now, the copyright office is undergoing changes in their fees but at the moment to apply for copyright it is $45 per application. It could go over $100 or to $35 depending on what the copyright is for be it art, music or whatever and whether you mail things in or do it electronically. The $45 is good until the changes go into affect in August.

Now if you don't have the $45 to apply for an actual copyright registration, you can perform what is called 'a poor man's copyright'. Print up your manuscript, go to the post office and mail it to yourself via certified mail. When it arrives, don't open it, just put it in a file so you have it. In case you are taken to court, an unopened envelop will hold up as evidence to support your claim as rightful copyright owner if everything is dated and they open it in court.

What your publisher is saying is that if your manuscript isn't copyrighted, anyone with 'proof' that they created it or something similar, can wind you up in litigation. They want to protect themselves as well if this happens that is why they are asking for a copy of the certificate. Something else the attorney told me was that copyright is in effect the moment you create something. Legally, you can use the copyright symbol - the circled C - at that time. You can even use TM for trade mark on images, the only thing you CAN'T do is use the circled R until you have it legally registered.

The attorney also advised to keep everything and have it copyrighted - the poor man's copyright way is fine here - even if you don't use it in case someone comes up with something similar you have protection there too.

Good luck!

Glitchie

PS. Oh! Almost forgot... Here's the US Copyright Website

With all due respect, your attorney doesn't know what he's talking about. "Poor man's copyright" doesn't do anything except waste a stamp. It doesn't provide you protection, and it doesn't even make good evidence.

It goes on to say that if I choose not to register the copyright, I may be limited in the damages that could be awarded in court if there is a copyright violation. Publisher will place a copyright notice on all versions of my mss., using the year of first release if no other information is available.

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All this means is that you need to register the copyright to collect "statutory" damages (that is, damages that are dictated by the copyright statute). Otherwise, you're limited to actual damages, which may be much lower. Also, registration is required if you want to take someone to court.

Trademark law is another thing entirely. You can get trademark protection for images, but only if they're used in commerce to designate a source of goods or services. That's way outside the scope of wannawrite's question.

Ownership of copyright does not, in and of itself, dictate how much of the profit goes to the author vs. the publisher. All that is handled through the publishing contract. In most cases, the author owns the copyright and sells selected rights to the publisher. Copyright owned by the publisher is more the exception rather than the rule.

Also, copyright does NOT protect you from being sued. You can always be sued by anyone for anything.

As for the OP's question, sorry, I don't have the answer off the top of my head. To be on the safe side, I'd ask for permission.

ETA: Here's a link with FAQs on copyright. Hope this helps.

writingirish said:

Are there copyrights on these quotations?

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If they are part of a work that still falls under copyright, yes.

How do you find out if they are considered public domain or if they are copyrighted?

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The date of original publication should be helpful here.

And if they are copyrighted, do you have to get permission to use them, since they are not a full body of work?

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It depends. "Fair use" is a murky doctrine, with no bright lines to it. If you're using one sentence from a novel, you're probably fine; if you're using one sentence from a song lyric, you definitely need permission; if you're using one line from a poem, it's going to depend on how long the poem is.

That would be a lot of permission seeking, as I expect to use at least a hundred or so.

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Yep, sure will be.

I have nothing to add, but will say that I agree with every word in the posts of Bubastes and IceCreamPrincess.

I am always wishing I were a lawyer!

Now if you don't have the $45 to apply for an actual copyright registration, you can perform what is called 'a poor man's copyright'. Print up your manuscript, go to the post office and mail it to yourself via certified mail. When it arrives, don't open it, just put it in a file so you have it. In case you are taken to court, an unopened envelop will hold up as evidence to support your claim as rightful copyright owner if everything is dated and they open it in court.

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I have seen this contradicted countless times by knowledgeable people.

Registering your copyright is advisable for all works. The registration is not necessary for copyright itself, but it permits you to collect more in damages (maybe it allows you to collect punitive damages; I forget the details).

WritingIrish,

Yes. You will have to do your homework on your quotes. First, find date of publications for your quotes. Quoting the bible or obvious works of historical note which passed into the public domain long ago, are pretty easy to find.

Excerpting a line of poetry from a contepmporary poet, even one recently deceased, will require permission for the attribution. You'll have to contact the publisher for it.

It's going to take legwork. Put on some comfortable shoes.

Good luck.

Bufty said:

Pssst! C'mere. Don't pass this on, but....

Not your fault, I know, but I hope a fee wasn't requested for this nonsense.

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Everything that I passed on was told to us in a free consultation - aside from the poor man's copyright, that was not directly from the attorney but from someone else.

Glitchie

Makes sense.

Glitchie said:

Everything that I passed on was told to us in a free consultation - aside from the poor man's copyright, that was not directly from the attorney but from someone else.

Glitchie

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Thanks, guys, you have been really helpful...and a HUGE thanks to writingirish for letting me piggyback. Think I understand, now. The copyright is to protect me, to ensure that I receive a larger portion of a settlement, in the event of a lawsuit, right?

Think I'll go hit that copyright site and see about the details.

Thanks, again.

writingirish said:

Thanks everyone for your comments. I thought perhaps I would give an example of the sort of quotes I am talking about to see if that changes the answer. They are the same sort of quotes you see in many books, such as Bartletts. For example -

"You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.~ Abraham Maslow.

"If I had my life to live again. I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. Tallulah Bankhead

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Buddha

"Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Do you think that these sort of things are all copyrighted? Good grief, where would I even begin? Thanks again.

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I'm pretty sure the Buddha quote is public domain...

In general, I think they that ARE under copyright, but then I'm not a judge in a courtroom in a copyright case, and that would be who makes the ultimate decision. You probably wouldn't want it to get that far anyway...

Several of Peter McWilliams' books have quotes just about every page (it seems some have more quote text than original text). I've got "Life 102" and it has older quotes that are clearly in the public domain, and also more recent quotes that clearly would not be. There's nothing on the copyright page saying he had permission to use any of these things, so I can only guess he went ahead and used them without getting permission. He had his own publishing company for his books, "Prelude Press," so perhaps he was his own lawyer in deciding to publish that way.

I understand it's a publisher's legal department would handle deciding if they needed to get permission and then getting permissions and all, so there seems to be a line of thought that says "just write it and let the publisher worry about it." Though admittedly, if a book has a lot of legal work associated with it, the publisher may decide to pass on it.

wannawrite said:

Thanks, guys, you have been really helpful...and a HUGE thanks to writingirish for letting me piggyback. Think I understand, now. The copyright is to protect me, to ensure that I receive a larger portion of a settlement, in the event of a lawsuit, right?

Think I'll go hit that copyright site and see about the details.

Thanks, again.

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The site at http://copyright.gov has a lot of good info and it's actually written in American, er, plain English. It tells exactly what registering your copyright gets you, and if I recall, it says you can even register AFTER someone else has infringed and get the full rights of being registered (but you'd need some other evidence that you're the original author regardless, so keep backups, old printouts, keep in touch with beta readers, etc.).

writingirish said:

Thanks everyone for your comments. I thought perhaps I would give an example of the sort of quotes I am talking about to see if that changes the answer. They are the same sort of quotes you see in many books, such as Bartletts. For example -

"You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.~ Abraham Maslow.

"If I had my life to live again. I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. Tallulah Bankhead

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Buddha

"Mountains cannot be surmounted except by winding paths. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Do you think that these sort of things are all copyrighted? Good grief, where would I even begin? Thanks again.

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Buddha and Goethe are definitely not copyrighted. Goethe died in 1832 and Buddha, what, 2500 years ago? As for Bankhead--by the way, that quote is incorrectly punctuated: you want a comma instead of a period in the middle--if it's just something she said, as opposed to something she wrote, she cannot have copyrighted it because it's got to be "fixed in tangible form" to be copyrighted. If it's something she said in, for example, some random magazine interview in the 1930s, there is almost no chance that any copyright protection subsists.

But in any case, the quotes you've posted so far are so brief that most likely you wouldn't run into trouble even if Buddha and Goethe had only died last year. One sentence from a book or long article is fine. Where you run into trouble is quoting song lyrics or lines of poetry (modern poetry, that is--anything 19th-century and earlier, and most early-20th century, is no longer copyrighted). That's because a single line represents a much larger piece of a song or poem--in terms of the percentage of the whole, quoting a line from a song is almost like quoting an entire chapter from a novel. So, watch out when it comes to modern songs or poetry; try to stick with quotes that come from much longer works (articles, books).

This question came up in my job a few months ago. We had a client who wanted to print pictures of Obama on various promotional products - and he was using random photos off the Web. *cringe* I ran to one of my old J-School profs and he said:

"The best rule of thumb is to assume you need permission to use anything. Some things on the Web are public domain, such as the texts of old books and documents, but copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years, so most works from the 20th century are still under copyright protection. And commercial uses are less likely to be considered fair uses than noncommercial ones, so you have to be especially careful.:

So quotes from Buddha, who died like 1400 years ago?, would probably be all right - but as everyone else has said, start asking for permission. Maybe you don't *have* to, but it's definitely better safe than sorry. Good luck!

Verbal quotes are definitely something entirely different from written or song quotes. Verbal quotes, such as JKF's "Ask not what your country can do for you...", are pretty much open for use.

Written quotes or song quotes, however, are a completely different story. As ideagirl said, it's a "fixed tangible product" thing. I recently ran into this discuss both at my work place and online with the IAMTW. I posted the saliant points in my blog. http://brandietarvin.livejournal.com/3531.html

It's interesting the things we take for granted.

BTW, the "poor man's copyright" suggestion? It's failed the legal test several times. People have brought that as evidence in actual court cases and the evidence was insufficient or thrown out. Judges do NOT consider registered or certified letters as proof of copyright. Maybe you'll have better luck, but precendent is against you.

writingirish said:

How do you find out if they are considered public domain or if they are copyrighted?

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Has the author been dead for seventy years or not?

wannawrite said:

I was going over my contract yesterday, and it states that I am responsible for 'registering the copyright with the US Copyright office, including payment of any fees and the cost of preparing printed and/or electronic documentation of the work as required by the US Copyright office.' It also says that I am to provide a copy of the copyright certificate to the publisher.

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May I be so bold as to ask the name of this publisher?

Everlasting said:

Does the production company have to get permission to do this?

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Yes, if they based the movie on your book. Proving that they did so may be very difficult indeed.

Please note, Everlasting's novel adaptation question and its replies have been split into a new thread,

Copyrighting a book vs a movie production (split from Legal/copyright question??)
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145165

-Derek