Does any of you here giving out what amounts to legal advice have formal legal training? Are any of you lawyers? If so, are any of you intellectual property specialists? Or, am I wasting my time reading amateur opinions by people who aren't qualified to have them let alone tell others the law? In other words, whose opinion can I trust? Citing case law here is rare. I wonder why? Hmm John -----Original Message----- From: Pat Asher [mailto:pasher@ee.net] Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 5:18 PM To: COPYRIGHT-L@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [COPYRIGHT] Copyright of Census and Photographic Images / was HeritageQue... At 06:00 PM 3/10/2006, JYoung6180@aol.com wrote: >--- >This only means that they could possibly have patented the PROCESS whereby >the images were enhanced--they cannot COPYRIGHT the images themselves. > Joan, Patent and copyright are 2 entirely different things. Processes may be patented. A description of a process may be copyrighted. A copy of a public domain record, regardless of the process used to create it, is neither patented or copyrighted. At http://www.heritagequest.com/html/customer.html#using Heritage Quest appears to be claiming copyright for their "enhanced" copies. AFAIK, the right to copy resides with the copyright holder. If the original is in the public domain, it belongs to the community at large and can therefore be copied by anyone. No one can claim copyright of something copied from the public domain, regardless of the superiority of the process used to create the copy. Remember the mantra? If you did not create it, you can not copyright it. <g> Pat ==== COPYRIGHT Mailing List ==== To unsubscribe from this list click on mailto:COPYRIGHT-L-request@rootsweb.com?subject=unsubscribe (list mode) or mailto:COPYRIGHT-D-request@rootsweb.com?subject=unsubscribe (digest mode)  Contact COPYRIGHT-admin@rootsweb.com for list related problems. For the COPYRIGHT-L archives, go to http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/copyright. ============================== Search the US Census Collection. Over 140 million records added in the last 12 months. Largest online collection in the world. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13965/rd.ashx

At 07:37 PM 3/10/2006, John Wylie wrote: >In other words, whose opinion can I trust? Citing case law here is rare. I >wonder why? Hmm The same questions come up over and over again, and those of us who are familiar with case law sometimes forget that newcomers to this list are not. Extensive list of relevant links to code, case law and other Opinion pages at the bottom of my copyright FAQ page for Freepages users: http://freepages.computers.rootsweb.com/~pasher/copyrtfaq.htm Specifically In regards copyright of copies, you'll want to read the Bridgeman v. Corel decision http://www.panix.com/~squigle/rarin/corel2.html Pat