> I guess what I am leading up to is the interesting thing he said that if
> my copyright notice was violated and I didn't take legal action I would
> loose my right. Basically, if you decide to let one slip and don't
> litigate, you automatically loose the right to do so in the future ( all
> this according to american law, or some precedent, I suppose).
That's not the case.
I discuss this in my Copyright FAQ (in question 2.2, "What is 'public
domain?'") at http://www.aimnet.com/~carroll/copyright/faq-home.html .
For your convenienece, here's the relevant portion:
There is a common belief that if someone infringes a copyright, and
the copyright owner does not sue or otherwise put a stop to the
infringement, the copyright is lost and the work goes into the public
domain. There is some pre-1988 law on this (e.g., Stuff v. E.C.
Publications, 432 F.2d 143 (2d Cir., 1965) and Transgo v. Ajac
Transmission Parts, 768 F.2d 1001 (9th Cir. 1985)), but it seems to
derive mostly from the fact that the copyright holder had acquiesced
in the publication of the work without notice back when notice was a
requirement. It was the publication without notice, and not the lack
of enforcement, that actually worked to put the work in the public
domain. This is forfeiture of copyright, not abandonment. Because
the notice requirement is now gone from copyright law, these cases
don't have much weight today.
I can't find anything that supports the idea that failure to assert a
copyright against an infringer can alone lead to placing the work in
the public domain (if you have any authoritative information on this,
please drop me a note at one of the addresses listed in the
introduction). Of course, circumstances may be such that the ability
to sue a particular infringer might be waived (e.g., a statute of
limitations may expire (see section 3.4), or if the infringer has
reasonably relied to his or her detriment on the copyright holder's
failure to sue, the doctrine of laches may bar a suit), but that's
only with respect to that particular infringer, and does not affect
the status of the copyright with respect to others.
-- Terry Carroll | "Al Gore is doing for the federal government what Santa Clara, CA | he did for the Macarena. He's removing all the carroll@tjc.com | unnecessary steps." Modell delenda est | - Bill Clinton, September 20, 1996
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