On Wednesday, November 22, 2000, Hinckley <[email protected]> wrote: > How about old obituaties? Are they copyrighted? Or can they be used only > before a specific date. Especially since I may want to quote the whole > obituary. Or is just quoting the source from which they came sufficient? I don't think we addressed this issue (at least recently). Speaking again about works subject to U.S. copyright law, 1) Certainly any obits before 1923 are now public domain and you can copy away. 2) I have also seen it stated that newspapers rarely renewed copyright after 28 years back when that was required, i.e. if published before 1964. Therefore, it is possible that obits before 1964 are also now public domain. You could contact the newspaper or the copyright office to determine this. The latter has info on this at <http://www.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ06.pdf>; it can be quite pricey, even if you are on-site, so you might be better off contacting the newspaper directly, as they may give you permission to reproduce even if it is still under copyright. 3) I have also seen it asserted that obits are formulaic, and therefore do not constitute original expression and so are not copyrightable no matter when they are published. I doubt if this is true in general, but have no way of knowing how common it is or how one determines if the obit is formulaic. Does anyone else have some information on this? S R C A cott obert ranston nderson [email protected]