Pat Asher wrote that Heritage Quest has the following statement online: "While it's true that the original documents are "public domain," we have painstakingly processed the records through our proprietary enhancement systems. It is through this synthesizing process that we have generated a new product, which is fully protected by U.S. and International copyright law." It sounds like they created software for making pre-existing census images more readable. Then, they applied the software to the census images to make a slightly different image from the original image. At first glance, one might think that the creative-effort requirement has been fulfilled. But the question is, "To what does the creativity apply?" It would certainly apply to the new software. However, manipulating software to improve or change an image doesn't seem sufficiently creative to make the new image copyrightable. I have used both Heritage Quest and Ancestry.com. When my library had only HQ, I used it. When they later added Ancestry, I noticed that the images were brighter (and I could search for more than just the head of household). At times, I couldn't read some names on Ancestry's census image, but they weres readable on HQ images due to a difference in brightness. The images were different from each other, but probably neither represented the whole page as well as the original document page. In the work that the two companies are doing, they are trying to make the image as readable as the original document. "Bridgeman Art, Inc v. Corel, Inc." might apply here. That ruling said that images of paintings that were an attempt to reproduce the painting as exactly as possible in the new format could not be copyrighted. I agree with Pat and James that the HQ images are not copyrighted. Cliff Lamere ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Pat Asher wrote: > <snip> > I did find this at the Customer service link: > "While it's true that the original documents are "public domain," we > have painstakingly processed the records through our proprietary > enhancement systems. It is through this synthesizing process that we > have generated a new product, which is fully protected by U.S. and > International copyright law." > > However, since copyright protects only original intellectual concepts, > it seems to me that copies (product) of public domain documents, no > matter how much they are enhanced, are not protected by copyright. > Again, they may be protected by the licensing agreement for access, > but that is not copyright. > > <snip>