To Sudek 13

[harrison987]

Originally Posted by brewerjerry

hi
Sorry but not quite true, Copyright for ww2 can still be claimed & held.

a company here in canada is claiming it copyright on the following ww2 german documents .
( To be clear I am nothing to do with the company)

note the date of publication and the author,
and copyright was still given

Cheers
Jerry

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/app/cipo/c...1&language=eng

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/app/cipo/c...1&language=eng

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/app/cipo/c...1&language=eng

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/app/cipo/c...1&language=eng

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/app/cipo/c...1&language=eng

http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/app/cipo/c...1&language=eng

This publishing company is full of shyte. I have already spoken with them, and Sicuro has NO COPYRIGHT on those items. The Canadian Intellectual Property Rights dept., hands out copyright to ANYONE. You do not have to provide proof of anything. You register online, tell them you are the owner, and voilà, you get a copyright certificate in the mail. They do not investigate the claims, and WILL NOT back you up in court.

I know this, because 1) I am Canadian, 2) I have dealt with copyright for maaannnnyyy years, and 3) I own about 80 original manuals, and wanted to obtain the copyrights WAAYYYYY before Sicuro did.

WW2 copyright does not exist anywhere I know of, not because it is WW2, but because of the date. If I owned a aircraft company and printed aircraft manuals in 1940...copyright would be lost if:

1) original author died (company went out of business) and 10 years go by from his death

2) 50 years after original publication, no copyright was re-registered.

3) company lost all records proving they were the original publisher.

However, I can RETAIN the copyright if I re-register, have proof of legal copyright, and are WITHIN the legal tmeframes/dates.

Sicuro is under the impression that IF NO ONE claims copyright after the author's death, then the first person who does becomes the legal copyright holder. That is 100% FALSE. Copyright automatically would have gone to EADS when they took over Messerschmitt AG/Daimler-Benz., and automatically lost when 50 yesrs went by from the publication date.

If they did not register the copyright 50 years after the original publication (75 in Canada, I believe), then even THEY cannot claim anything. Once in FREE DOMAIN, it remains in FREE DOMAIN for life. This is recognized worldwide, even in Germany.

I have a letter from the legal department at EADS, stating they even THEY cannot prove they are the legal successor, as the company changed so many times, and there is NO documents showing they are the successor (even though it is pretty obvious). It would never hold up in court. EADS can offer a "non-exclusive" license to print the work (logs/branding, etc.), but Sicuro's copyright claim is BS.

Copyright law, though slightly different in every country, is GENERALLY the same. Once an item is in free domain, it remains in FREE DOMAIN.

To date, the family of William Shakespeare gets NO ROYALTIES from plays published...no copyright. That is why you see his plays published by 100's of different publishers.

Both Sicuro and sudek13 cannot claim copyright on anything, and would lose any court battle, as they would not be able to prove they are the LEGAL SUCCESSOR of the photos or documents

100% fact.



mike