Quote:
Originally Posted by kurochka
My concern is that I am dealing with public domain books. You cannot (and should not) claim copyright in them. I do not believe that the contractual restrictions (i.e., before you read you agree to something similar that copyright provides) can stand up to legal scrutiny. Reproductions of public domain works in any shape or form are typically public domain as well.
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Not necessarily.
If you put work into "laying out" a public domain work in a non-trivial manner then, at least in the UK, you can claim what's called a "typographical copyright" on that book, even if the text is in the public domain. This lasts for a fixed term of 25 years, from the date of the initial publication of your version.