Who owns old letters

First, in order for someone to win an infringement action, they would have to demonstrate that the original materials were protected by copyright. Short jokes are not typically protected, particularly if they are obvious. Next, they would have to show you had access to the material and copied it.

Copying can be shown if there is so much similarity that independent creation seems unlikely as decided by a jury. The classic example is when typos from the original work also show up in the allegedly copied work. Proving infringement is complex and complicated, as this piece about a case involving Six Feet Under discusses. The wait just kills me when I just want to get my book out for people to read! Please help me! Answer: First, I am assuming you are in the U.

You do not have to wait at all. Question: I just finished reading a memoir and was surprised to find so many names mentioned under least than desirable circumstances. In one description of a boyfriend, giving specifics that if not made up would identify him, she calls him stupid and tells how he rifled his friends wallets for cash. I find that hard to understand that if this is true, how can she get away with publishing it without getting sued? Or do the big publishers have lawyers who can vet the specifics?

Answer: Keep in mind that nothing is completely safe until a judge decides it is. But generally, you may name names in your memoir or other book. When it comes to factual information, stick to the truth. The more proof you have, the better. If you will be disclosing private information, then research whether that information has been made public in court documents, news reports, even family gossip. If the information has been made public, then there is less risk someone could claim successfully, at least that you disclosed private facts.

The false statement or disclosed private information needs to be more than embarrassing. Generally, it needs to imply criminal, deviant, or professionally incompetent conduct.

I sued; we settled; I was able to publish my book which is now officially copyrighted, as well as the original draft. I will note that my published book retained the original spelling, but retained the sentence and paragraph structure that I created along with over footnotes.

I respectfully disagree — strongly — with the notion that a transcription is going to be copyrightable. A translation, yes, but a transcription is going to be a hard hard sell on originality. Your aim in a transcription is to achieve an exact copy of the text of the original. Judy, I agree that a transcription that is exact would not be copyrightable.

However, in my case and referring to the original draft, I corrected spelling and capitalization, added punctuation to create sentences and paragraphs, wrote footnotes, introductions and other material, all of which appeared in the plagiarized publication, not just the letters.

The original work in the draft was my intellectual property, even if the letter transcriptions were not. In the actual book that I published, I used the original spelling and capitalization, only adding punctuation to create sentences and paragraphs for readability. Therefore those portions of the book that were strictly letter transcriptions were not copyrightable. Those portions of the book were copyrighted, as were the original writings in the original draft. Would you agree that is correct or not?

Mere changes to punctuation or capitalization would still, I suspect, not be enough to qualify for copyright. However, the footnotes, the introductions and all other new material added are all clearly copyrightable. But your new preface and footnotes and the like, sure. I need to clarify my last paragraph. If she wrote it herself, would that portion not the photos etc be subject to copywrite? Something needs to change. Our best option these days is to post our unique sources to reputable online genealogical services.

What an absolute shame, and my aunt would have been horrified that an outdated law would prevent me from sharing what she tried so hard to communicate and preserve.

There is no good reason for this. This post answered my immediate question plus a lot more. I'm considering publishing a book using letters inmates wrote to an organization that helps them re-integrate back into society. Can I use an image of the actual letter?

I hope to show how difficult it is for them to re-integrate and that most of the problems originate from substance abuse. Also, can I use the entire letter as long as I remove all identification? I'm not a lawyer but would not think giving anonymity to the author would prevent copyright infringement.

It could be compared with a person uploading a record to YouTube and thinking because they did not mention who the singer or composer was that it would be OK. In my opinion permission would need to be obtained from the writer before lengthy quotes or photographs of the letters were used.

As said I am not a lawyer and could be wrong - I'm just giving an opinion based on my limited but growing knowledge of copyright law. Home Disclaimer About. If I send you a letter, unless I have an agreement with you to the contrary, I continue to own the copyright. As the recipient of the letter, you own the letter itself -- the paper and ink. You can show the letter to others, sell it, give it to a friend, donate it to a library, preserve it, or with one possible limited exception I will come to in a moment destroy it.

Or to put it in a more lawyerly way, absent an express writing to the contrary, transfer of ownership of the tangible physical property of the letter from me to you does not carry with it the transfer of the copyright.

As the recipient of the letter, you cannot, however, publish the entirety of the letter without my consent except for another possible limited exception I will come to in another minute. The reproduction right remains with me, as the copyright owner -- as does the right to create a derivative work. If you find my letter housed in a scholarly library, the library's permission to reproduce it will ordinarily not suffice unless I assigned my copyright to the library.

You will need to obtain permission from me or, if I'm dead, my heirs. You and others can, however, quote portions of the letter I sent you, to the extent permitted by fair use. Alas, there are no bright lines as to what constitutes fair use -- no clear assurances that quoting, for example, 30 words from a two-page unpublished letter is surely fair use, while quoting words from the same letter is not.

It is certain, however, that, because a letter is a short work, the number of words that you can safely quote is far smaller than the number you could safely quote from a longer work. You must also quote sparingly from other short works, such as song lyrics and poetry. For a while, there was disturbing uncertainty as to whether you could quote anything at all from an unpublished letter. The fair use of unpublished letters and diaries was the subject of a series of cases about 20 years ago in which my firm and I represented the defendant biographers and publishers: Salinger v.

Random House , New Era v. Henry Holt see also this decision denying en banc rehearing , and Wright v. Warner Books. Jacquie McTaggart The people who wrote those letters are the copyright owners of those letters. If they are deceased, the ownership passes to their heirs. Imagine getting copies of decades-old letters that your mom wrote to your dad and vice versa from a well-meaning person who found them at a garage sale.

Finding the family and giving them the letters would make a great story for a magazine!