In my opinion, you'd do well to do some research into how copyright law defines "work" before continuing this chain of logic.
Ryan
What, in particular, do you disagree with?
Do you disagree that:
1) Works can contain other works (such as in a compilation)...
2) That the OGL provides no specific instructions on multi-part works stating that all works in a compilation must be 'covered works' for any work to be covered...
I personally have done some researched how into Title 17 and some of the available case law. Largely "work" is a term of art meaning "commercial unit", but "work" in the most basic copyright law sense means "that in which the copyright subsists".
So, in a compilation of 15 different poems by 15 different authors, if the authors still own their copyrights then there are 16 different copyrights: one on each of the poems, and then one on the compilation. Each one of those 16 elements can be deemed a "work" under copyright law.
I then presume that any "work" can be established as a "covered" work in terms of the OGL, separate from any other work in a compilation or a collected volume, particularly in instances where the authors are wholly distinct.
Similarly, where I have 16 pieces of art which I own copyrights to, and you combine that with text you own copyright to, there are individual copyrights on each piece of art, a copyright on the text, and a copyright on the book (to the extent that the book orders and presents the art and the text).
Similarly, I could envision a boxed set where John owns the copyright on the perfect bound volume of fiction, background, and maps. Jill owns the copyright on the separate perfect bound volume of rules. And Joe has licensed the works of John and Jill and put them in a boxed set with additional materials he owns the copyright on, establishing a separate copyright on the collection and its packaging. Such an arrangement would not be inconsistent with copyright law, in my opinion.
The number of separate copyrights is not necessarily based on the physical separation into separate units. For example, if I write a long work, and say put it on my website as a PDF in fixed form, it is copyrighted automatically. If 10 years later, I print it in 3 volumes which are broken up simply because the binding would crack if I printed it as a single volume, then that new printing does not in any way give me three separate copyrights which have been expanded in any appreciable way over the 1 copyright I already have. At best the 3 volumes might have their own copyrights which extend only to any new formatting, but the underlying content is a single copyrighted work.
A lot of this is up to judges, depending entirely on fact patterns, intent of the publisher, packaging and presentation, etc., which will vary on a case-by-case basis, making a single, uniform, all-encompassing, specific definition of work (beyond "that in which the copyright subsists") either impractical or impossible.
Lee
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