Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Let's say we have a well done HTML on PG. I run it through Calibre to generate a Mobipocket version and I want to copyright it. If I copyright it, can someone else do the same thing and get the same eBook and also copyright it or is it too late because I've done it first?
|
You cannot copyright a public domain work, unless you add content to it (eg an introduction, or footnotes) and, even if you claim copyright on those, the copyright only protects that extra content, not the original text.
If you create a "non-trivial layout" for a public domain work, you can claim what's called a "typographical copyright" for your specific edition of that work; in most countries, that lasts for 25 years from the date of publication of your edition. All that does, however, is provide protection for your edition - it doesn't stop someone else from copying the public domain text from it.