Partially Off Topic: Legal Status of Excerpts in Dictionaries and Quotation Books

[Garson O'Toole]

Thanks for your response, John. There is an intriguing article that
appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1992 about a man who composes
epigrams and successfully sues or threatens companies for copyright
violation.

Title: Exactly How Many Brilliant Thoughts Are There? 5,632. Mr.
Brilliant Wrote Them – And Copyrighted Them: You Must Know No. 1041
http://www.ashleighbrilliant.com/WSJ.htm

The examples in the article do not involve Dictionaries or Quotation
books. Yet, the examples do concern single epigrams in commercial
products.
Garson

On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 8:18 PM, Baker, John <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Partially Off Topic: Legal Status of Excerpts in Dictionaries
>              and              Quotation Books
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>        The Copyright Office's webpage is actually quite accurate,
> except for the perhaps overly cautious advice in the final paragraph.
> Under Section 107 of the copyright law, the fair use of a copyrighted
> work is not an infringement of copyright.  In determining whether a use
> is a fair use, the following factors apply:
>
>        (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such
> use is of a
> commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
>        (2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
>        (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in
> relation to the copyrighted
> work as a whole; and
>        (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value
> of the copyrighted
> work.
>
>        Ordinarily, I wouldn't think that there would be much question
> that a quotation in a book of quotations or an historical dictionary
> would be a fair use.  However, questions might arise with short poems or
> song lyrics, or other very short works, if the quotation is significant
> in relationship to the entire work.  For example, YBQ includes the
> entirety of the Gettysburg Address.  That's in the public domain, of
> course, but questions could arise if it were not.  Conversely, the song
> "Happy Birthday to You," which has an aggressive copyright holder, is
> listed only by title.  There is some question as to the validity of its
> copyright, but I daresay that Yale University Press has no interest in
> having the test case.
>
>
> John Baker
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of Garson O'Toole
> Sent: Monday, November 29, 2010 7:28 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Partially Off Topic: Legal Status of Excerpts in Dictionaries
> and Quotation Books
>
> Dictionaries like the OED contain an enormous number of example
> sentences extracted from copyrighted texts. Quotation books also
> contain large numbers of copyrighted passages. I thought this use was
> allowed in the United States under the "fair use" doctrine, but I
> cannot point to a specific legal ruling.
>
> The webpage at the U.S Copyright Office about Fair Use is ambiguous
> and tentative:
> http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
>
> Could an editor, publisher, or lawyer share thoughts on this topic?
> Does the OED contact authors to clear rights to sentences? Does the
> YBQ obtain permission from writers to include specific quotations?
> Have publishers or authors received warning letters from lawyers?
> Thanks
> Garson
>
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