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Comment by harshreality | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused about how 17 USC 203 works. Specifically (b)(1):

> (1) A derivative work prepared under authority of the grant before its termination may continue to be utilized under the terms of the grant after its termination, but this privilege does not extend to the preparation after the termination of other derivative works based upon the copyrighted work covered by the terminated grant.

The naïve way I read that is that Penguin can continue to sell any work they prepared under the previous grant. They just can't make any new editions. Is that the case?

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That is true, if and only if what they prepared is considered a derivative work, which means it has sufficient originally to acquire a separate copyright.

When the relevant copyright act was written, the assumption was that this would be things like translations, screenplays and motion pictures created thereof, or similar major derivatives that are clearly distinct from the original.

Since then, jurisprudence has largely moved towards considering even smaller changes derivative works, but I'm not entirely sure if a book as laid out by a publisher with added illustrations is actually considered a "derivative work" of the original copyright in the manuscript. It is obviously derivative, as it is derived from the manuscript, but does it reach the level of a distinct "work"?

That's a weird one. Presumably both the two years of notice and this term are intended to ensure a publisher doesn't have to stop selling/throw away books it has printed in good faith under the existing copyright grant.

But I'd be curious whether it will allow Penguin to continue to print new books (provided they're identical to the ones they've previously printed) or just sell the existing print run. Presumably even if they had permission to sell it as an ebook, they would have issues continuing to sell it as an ebook as formats and standards inevitably change.

In this case he granted rights to the book itself, not to make derivative works of it, so I don't think this clause is relevant. I think it's saying that e.g. if Penguin had made a tv-series based on the book, they would not lose the rights to the tv-series when the grant of the book terminated.

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