Re: adobe/o'reillly publishing?

i18n@... wrote:

>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >
> > >
> > > I hadn't realized it was a work for hire. [Most contemporary books are
> > > not published as "work for hire".]
> >
> > Most collective works commissioned by publishers are.
>
> In this I actually do agree with Peter - There is a copyright in the
> collection itself, and there is a copyright in the individual works.
> Without reviewing the specifics of each contract with each individual,
> we can't be certain if OUP owns both types of copyright or not, although
> I suspect they do, with limited re-publishing rights to the authors.

No other copyrights are mentioned on the copyright page. Every
contributor signed a copyright release form.

Very rarely, in a collective work one sees that one or two articles are
copyright © their writers rather than the publisher, but this is very
unusual, and it's quite likely the the publisher would rather reject the
contribution than allow it to appear in the collective work without
owning the copyright.

> The other critical issue is not who owns the copyrights, but if the
> rights to derivative works have been otherwise assigned.

I think the biggest parts of the contract are about that topic. Even in
1992 OUP knew what it was doing.

> Again, not worth discussing beyond mentioning, in the hopes it will be
> useful for someone here to have at least heard of the issue should you
> ever need to negotiate such a matter. If you are in such a situation,
> please make sure the ownership of the original work, plus the rights to
> "derivative works" - an important legal term - are concluded to your
> satisfaction.

Did you forget to add "IANAL" there? Advice from a random individual who
refuses to reveal his qualifications to provide such advice isn't worth
the paper it isn't printed on. (Especially when said individual was not
familiar with the phrase "work for hire.")
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...