Copyright question

[jhntek]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NY

I have indexing info for an old small town newspaper that is no longer in business. The index info has names of people, date of newspaper, page and column info and brief subject - from the late 1800 to the 1950s. The copyright name of the newspaper and a webpage url has been bought by another person. They presently haven't started to generate a new paper or have any content on their webpage. Do I have the right to make a webpage with this indexing info for people to use to aid in their ancestry search?
Thank you,
JHNTEKWhat is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

 

[divgradcurl]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NY

I have indexing info for an old small town newspaper that is no longer in business. The index info has names of people, date of newspaper, page and column info and brief subject - from the late 1800 to the 1950s. The copyright name of the newspaper and a webpage url has been bought by another person. They presently haven't started to generate a new paper or have any content on their webpage. Do I have the right to make a webpage with this indexing info for people to use to aid in their ancestry search?
Thank you,
JHNTEKWhat is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

If all you are doing is providing factual information -- names, dates, page and column numbers -- along with a brief summary of your own creation, it's quite unlikely that you would be liable for copyright infringement. If you actually are going to post snippets from the columns rather than providing your own original commentary, then you are more likely to run into copyright problems. Same with reproducing pictures or images or drawings.

All that said, anything first published prior to January 1, 1923 is in the public domain and free to use, so you could publish the entirety of the papers, including pictures, for anything first published prior to 1923. Anything first published after that may be in the public domain, but you would need to research that on a case-by-case basis.