> There are occasionally contemporary publishers that also assert copyright over vintage > postcards that were published by companies they have bought out. > > We have so local postcards from around 1900 that a company claims copyrights over.
There's a good chance that copyright in a ca. 1900 postcard has expired (date of publication + 95 years). Setting that aside, this assertion by a new company would only be legitimate if the original copyright holder transferred or bequeathed the rights to the new company in a formal instrument--an assignment letter, a will. If the company merely purchased the stock or the originals and then reprinted them, they have no copyright interest. One cannot buy the rights to a work by buying the work (which is why MOMA doesn't own the copyrights to Matisse's paintings, for example). One of the complexities of copyright law is that a lot of owners of material don't know this and therefore assert copyrights that they don't necessarily own. Ideally, when the new rights holder is not a direct heir, one can ask to see some proof of the transfer of rights. Additionally, for postcards copyrighted in the US before 1978, the copyright may have expired if it wasn't registered or if the registration was not renewed. So for material where there is not an individual artist (photographer) who is copyright holder, but rather a (c) held by a publisher, the chances are greater that the work has entered the public domain and a bit of copyright research to determine this may be worth the effort. See http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm for a handy breakdown of copyright terms. Regards, Eve Sinaiko NYC
