On 2012-03-03 21:10, Lee Passey wrote:
On 3/3/2012 11:56 AM, James Adcock wrote:
Copyright is a governmentally created monopoly that protects a specific creative expression of an idea. The full Project Gutenberg license is no doubt protected by copyright.
My understanding [I am not a lawyer, consult your lawyer] is that legalize is not subject to copyright. IE anyone can use legalize.
Your understanding is incorrect, particularly in light of the Berne Convention Implementation act.
Copyright restricts the re-use of the creative expressions, not of the underlying "ideas"; now in US copyright law, their is something called the "merger doctrine", that is, if the expression itself cannot be separated from the underlying idea (which often is the case for legal documents, as every comma in the exact wording is relevant), you can no longer use copyright to restrain the distribution of such expression where the exact idea needs to be communicated, for example, in documents explaining the details of a certain law, regulation, or contract, and you may even reproduce legal documents in their entirety, if relevant. it is a tricky area to tread, though, and won't help you to copy a bunch of template contracts drafted by a lawyer to use as your own in a different context. Jeroen. PS. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_doctrine_%28copyright_law%29