A few years ago I heard a US lawyer speak on copyright and manuscript
texts. US and European copyright law differs but I think what he said is
nevertheless applicable. In a nutshell, any original content in an
edition will get the 70 (or 95 or whatever) years. Everything else is in
the public domain.
If this opinion is right then the question turns on whether the
publication has any original content. If the text is in the public
domain then it is not subject to copyright. (You could argue that this
applies to all medieval and classical texts.) An apparatus is merely a
compact way to represent an array of texts. If it is just reporting the
readings of texts that are in the public domain then you can argue that
it has no original content. Consequently, the only things in an edition
of public domain texts that can be copyrighted are the editors
contributions (e.g. introduction, index, any novel conjectures)!
Of course the one with the most money would win if it came down to a
legal case.
Best
Tim Finney
> A group of us have been discussing this privately, and agreed to post
> the query to the Medieval and Classical lists. Dot's formulation below
> (to DM-L) is probably better than mine would have been, so I'll just
> copy it wholesale (for "medieval" read "classical"). I'll wait for
> replies on list before giving my interpretation of this stuff.
>
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