However, is not the potential problem here in the scanning of GPC's pages as opposed to the pages of the original? A few years ago I worked for a date book company that decided to compete with a well-known diary house that specialized in a date book centered on New York City. All of the pages of "my" company's were original, except they ran out of development time and took a short-cut for one page. They reproduced that page from the competitors' book and the lawsuit response was immediate. It was not the data on that page, it was the photo-reproduction of it. I advise caution if the intention is to scan GPC's product. Richard > -----Original Message----- > From: Mike Goad [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 9:12 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Reprints? > > > At 09:58 AM 2/10/00 -0600, you wrote: > >The four-volume SOME PROMINENT VIRGINIA FAMILIES by Louise Pecquet du > >Bellet was originally published in 1907. Genealogical > Publishing Company > >reprinted it in 1976, combining volumes so that now it is only two > >books. There is no index, so putting these books online would enable > >searching and increase their usefulness. Does Genealogical Publishing > >Company hold a copyright, do you think? How would someone go about > >finding out? 1200+ pages would be a lot of trouble to scan, if only to > >find that it could not be put online...... > > If the books were published in 1907, they are in the public domain. Once > in the public domain, always in the public domain. Even if the material > were published in a new book with new material added, only the new > material would be protected and then only if originality is > involved in the > new material. So putting two volumes of public domain material into one > volume results in .... what? > > One volume of public domain material. > > http://www.rootsweb.com/~mikegoad/copyright1.htm > > Mike Goad > > > ==== COPYRIGHT Mailing List ==== > Searchable archives at > http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl?list=copyright > > ============================== > Join the RootsWeb WorldConnect Project: > Linking the world, one GEDCOM at a time. > http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ > >