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Originally Posted by GlenBarrington
Maybe I read through the thread too quickly. But while source material in the Public Domain is available for anyone to use, Can't individual's work done to format and present the PD material be copyrighted (or at least protected in some way)?
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In the EU, a specific edition of a book can be protected by what's called a "typographical copyright" which has a fixed duration of 25 years. But typographical copyrights don't apply to ebooks, and don't exist at all in the US.
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If not, how can Barnes and Noble publish various classic PD books with copyright notices in them?
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If the B&N editions contain additional material, such as an introduction, or footnotes, that additional information is protected by copyright even if the actual text of the book isn't. Of course, there's nothing to prevent anyone from putting a copyright notice in a purely public domain work - it simply has no meaning.