Book People Archive

Re: copyright

Jeff & Paulina Miner wrote:

>I realize that proofing and coding take a lot of 
>time -- but isn't that analagous to attempting to copyright the typesetting 
>of a book?

  I believe the basic question is whether that work has added a unique
expression to the final work -- is there anything 'copyrightable' about it?

  One way to think about it might be to imagine the same work to be
done by 10 others, and see what, if any, unique variants appear. If they
all produce essentially the same result, there's no real authorship or
personal expression involved, and so nothing to protect, except perhaps
under catalogue copyright and equivalents.


  I believe the result of typesetting a book can be copyrighted,
especially if they're produced by great book designers such as
Bruce Rogers, as there's much 'tweaking' of layout to make it
work. Ordinary 'Microsoft Word'-type layout, on the other hand,
is probably not protectable. 
             
  But it's just a belief and an opinion. I also believe and opine
that typeface design is copyrightable, or at the very least, should be.

> Also, I saw a web page that announced that the "look and feel" of it was
> copyright. How can one copyright a "look and feel" of a website?

  Presumably in the same way that Apple and many others could copyright
the look and feel of their various user interfaces.  There was a rush
of such court cases in the late '80s and early '90s if I recall -- Lotus
is another name that comes to mind. And from what I remember, several
'components' were indeed considered to be protected by copyright.  Whether
that is still so, I can't say -- much has happened since then,
and there were several appeals pending when I last checked.

-- 
Anders Thulin     Anders.X.Thulin@[redacted]     040-661 50 63
Telia ProSoft AB, Carlsgatan 6, SE-201 20 Malm, Sweden

[Moderator: Eventually, both Apple and Lotus lost their "look and feel"
 lawsuits.  (Lotus' case even went to the US Supreme Court, and in 1996, a
 rare tie vote effectively upheld the appeals court ruling against Lotus.)
 For an interesting paper discussing these cases, and the application of
 "look and feel" issues to web sites, see Lisa Byerly's "Look and Feel
 Protection of Web Site User Interfaces: Copyright or Trade Dress?"
 (Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal, 2/98), online
 at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property/protection/Resources/byerly.htm

 Sweden's Copyright Act is summarized in English at 
 http://www.unesco.org/culture/copy/copyright/sweden/sommaire.html
 I didn't see anything in it about protection for typesetting, but
 there may be case law in that country I'm not aware of.  - JMO]