Quote:
Originally Posted by Muckraker
If an American writer first publishes a book with a US publishing house and that book is in the public domain in the US then the book is also in the public domain of every signatory country of the Berne Convention--which is just about every country other than the US--due to the "rule of the shorter term." This rule states that signatories will consider work to be in their own public domain if the work is public domain in its country of origin. A complete list of countries is located here: http://www.copyrightaid.co.uk/copyri...on_signatories
I'm currently battling Createspace over this matter because they are claiming that US public domain material cannot be sold in their newly-offered European Distribution Channel because it may not be public domain in the countries that channel covers--UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. I'm pointing out to Createspace that all of those countries signed the Berne Convention and adhere to the completely logical and simple "rule of the shorter term." Any US-generated, US-published public domain work is also public domain in every country Createspace distributes to. |
I'm afraid you're overlooking one extremely important thing, which is that many countries have bilateral intellectual property treaties with other countries which override the rule of the shorter term. Both the UK and Germany, to name but two countries, have copyright agreements with the US which mean that the "rule of the shorter term" does not apply between those countries. A book that is published in the US is still protected by copyright in the UK if it remains under UK copyright even if it's in the US public domain, and vice versa. Such bilateral treaties are specifically permitted by Article 20 of the Berne Convention.
Ie, Createspace are right.