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Re: copyright questions



Mr. Pike,

Your summary is very helpful, thank you!  I know that the
researcher is writing a biography of the individual in question, so
my mind had made the natural leap from "looking at" to "publishing
some extracts from" the correspondence rather automatically. Your
explanation goes a long way in helping me sort out the copyright
issues attached.

Regards,

Jacqueline Haun
Archivist
The Lawrenceville School
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648
(609) 895-2034
jhaun@lawrenceville.org


On 1 Sep 2000, at 9:06, Gregory Pike wrote:

> Good morning Ms. Haun,
>
> Copyright guru Peter Hirtle and myself had a discussion about this several months ago as I also deal with correspondence from people who quite frankly, have no heirs to track down.  We agreed that since intellectual property such as copyright is considered part of a person's estate, state laws
would apply.  If a person has no heirs, his estate (including copyright) would be administered by "the state" and may become the actual owner.
>
> Unfortunately, we also agreed that trying to track down the person in a state's government that handles intellectual property could really be a nightmare!  My solution (and what we do here) is to use the phrase  "Courtesy of <the creator's name>" which signifies that while you are aware of the
copyright holder's identity, it was impossible to track him or her down.
>
> Of course, one doesn't need copyright for a researcher to LOOK at something in an archives so all of this may not be necessary.  Copyright only deals with publishing, not necessarily access.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Gregory Pike, C.A.
> Digital Manuscript Project
> National Library of Medicne
> pikeg@mail.nlm.nih.gov
> (301) 435-8213
> c/o
> History Associates, Inc.
> Rockville, MD 20850
>

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