Unimatic1140
Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Minnesota
Hi everyone, there is a website out there called The Old Car Manual Project. They scan and provide thousands of vintage automobile service manuals, owners manuals, brochures and spec sheets produced by the automotive industry in the 20th century.
I run a website dedicated to vintage US made home appliances (washers, stoves, mixers, dishwashers, etc). I would like to do something similar so I have taken up a major study of copyright law to try to figure out what of my vintage appliance document collection is actually in the public domain. I have thousands of pre-1978 vintage appliance operating instruction guides, service manuals, owners manuals and glossy sales literature brochures. About 75% of my collection is not marked with any copyright declaration what so ever. On the 25% that is marked with a valid copyright notice I was able to find the copyright registration records and verify that re-registration had never occurred on nearly 99% of the materials (about 1% was re-registered and I realize that I cannot post those).
My question is on the materials that have no copyright designation what so ever. Under current law since all of these documents were printed before 1978 they would fall into the public domain at their inception. My concern is whether these documents are considered to be "published" for copyright considerations. Copyright terms are very different between published and unpublished works. These works were either provided with the appliance at time of purchase or you could have ordered a copy from the manufacturer even if you never purchased the product. Some companies gave them away for free, others for a small charge. Obviously brochures were given away for free either at retailers or by writing away to the company and requesting them. None of these materials are still available and most are extremely rare and only on extremely rare occasions do they even show up eBay or other auction sites.
I suspect that there will be no previous case law concerning such materials to reference in the past. So I guess I'm looking for advice and opinions on the possible liabilities involved.
Thanks again and I appreciate everyone assistance in this matter.
Hi everyone, there is a website out there called The Old Car Manual Project. They scan and provide thousands of vintage automobile service manuals, owners manuals, brochures and spec sheets produced by the automotive industry in the 20th century.
I run a website dedicated to vintage US made home appliances (washers, stoves, mixers, dishwashers, etc). I would like to do something similar so I have taken up a major study of copyright law to try to figure out what of my vintage appliance document collection is actually in the public domain. I have thousands of pre-1978 vintage appliance operating instruction guides, service manuals, owners manuals and glossy sales literature brochures. About 75% of my collection is not marked with any copyright declaration what so ever. On the 25% that is marked with a valid copyright notice I was able to find the copyright registration records and verify that re-registration had never occurred on nearly 99% of the materials (about 1% was re-registered and I realize that I cannot post those).
My question is on the materials that have no copyright designation what so ever. Under current law since all of these documents were printed before 1978 they would fall into the public domain at their inception. My concern is whether these documents are considered to be "published" for copyright considerations. Copyright terms are very different between published and unpublished works. These works were either provided with the appliance at time of purchase or you could have ordered a copy from the manufacturer even if you never purchased the product. Some companies gave them away for free, others for a small charge. Obviously brochures were given away for free either at retailers or by writing away to the company and requesting them. None of these materials are still available and most are extremely rare and only on extremely rare occasions do they even show up eBay or other auction sites.
I suspect that there will be no previous case law concerning such materials to reference in the past. So I guess I'm looking for advice and opinions on the possible liabilities involved.
Thanks again and I appreciate everyone assistance in this matter.
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