Original indexes are covered by copyright laws. Supposed a old book had no index and it was published before 1923. Any publisher or compiler can not claim copyright to the book BUT if the book was re-published in the entirety and index is added to the book - the publisher/compiler has copyright ONLY to the index - not the re-published portion. USA is a party to Berne Treaty and WIPO Treaty on copyrights. The Database copyright law does not exist because we the genealogists fought it off back in Dec 1998. There had been repeated attempts to no avail because the Europeans are wary of the database portion. W. David Samuelsen Libbie Griffin wrote: > > > > >For an object to be subject to copyright it has to have artistic, > >literary, dramatic or musical work. Is the index covered by this? > > > This is so completely contrary to everything I've learned about United > States copyright law that I'm wondering if international or English > copyright law is very different from ours in America. > > Would someone please comment who knows the subject well? > > Libbie > > ==== COPYRIGHT Mailing List ==== > Support RootsWeb - http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/how-to-subscribe.html > > ============================== > Personalized Mailing Lists: never miss a connection again. > http://pml.rootsweb.com/ > Brought to you by RootsWeb.com.