U.S. copyright law protects unpublished works. The copyright statute provides for these the same protection given to any work published since January 1st, 1978. The protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Copyright normally belongs to the creator of a work from the moment it is created. Once the creator of the work has died, the copyright passes to his heirs. Technically, I guess this means that the copyright for each of the letters belongs to the heirs of those who wrote it. It sounds as though you do own the copyright for most of the material, being the estate administrator and that no one else wanted those letters. The only legal problems that I can see with your proposed project would be if one or more of the heirs would file a copyright infringement suit because you used information from a letter that one of their parents (or grandparents) wrote. What is the probability of that? I doubt that any copyright lawyer would take such a case. There is no financial benefit to them and that really what copyright litigation is all about, as I understand it. There are a couple of options, though, that would completely remove any possibility of infringement. One option would be to contact the heirs of the letter writers and get permission from them. As another option, using only excerpts from letters where the copyright is not clearly yours should qualify under the fair use principal of copyright law. Fair use and other aspects of copyright law and the genealogy are discussed on my page at http://www.cswnet.com/~sbooks/genealogy/copyright/copyright.htm Mike Goad http//www.cswnet.com/~sbooks/genealogy/ for other genealogy related resources such as copyright issues, DAR Patriot Index lookups, Cousins Cross-reference table and more. At 03:48 PM 12/29/00 -0600, maryann wrote: >Who owns the copyright to pictures and letters of the mid 1920's thru >the 1970's? > >I am in possession of many pictures and family letters - literally >hundreds of them. The letters were written by my parents, >grandparents and several aunts and uncles. Most were written by my >mother. All writers are deceased. > >Some of the letters were given to me by parents at different times >before they died. Others were in the house when Mom died. Dad died >before her. The pictures were, for the most part, given to me by my >parents before their death. > >I was the administrator of Mom's estate. None of the other heirs >wanted the letters. I was pleased to have them. Each heir took the >usual things from the house after Mom died - some furniture, dishes, >an old truck and etc. > >Also, there are many pictures of family, homes, and other interesting >things which tell a lot about our family. > >I would like to use excerpts from the letters and write a lengthy >chronology of our family. I don't want to do this unless it can be >shared with all the family and without legal problems on the >copyright. I will only the parts that would not embarrass anyone. > >My question is: who owns the copyright on the letters and the >pictures. I believe I own the letters since some were given to me and >others were inherited - but do I own the copyright? > >I believe this is an unusual collection since there are so very many >letters - literally hundreds! > >Thanks for any help you can give me. > >Mary > > > > >==== COPYRIGHT Mailing List ==== >Freepages, that is free web pages >http://www.rootsweb.com/rootsweb/press/freepages.html > >============================== >Join the RootsWeb WorldConnect Project: >Linking the world, one GEDCOM at a time. >http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com