PERL: "Copyright Holder" is whoever is named in the copyright or
copyrights for the Perl package.
Alain: We haven't worked this one out yet. Can we collectively be
designated as the Copyright Holder, without incorporating ourselves?
Anthony: Any lawyers around?
Geoff Canyon: My wife is not a lawyer, but she's worked as a paralegal
(although not in Intellectual Property law).
Alain: Good initiative, Geoff. Thank your wife for us.
Geoff Canyon: She thinks you don't need to do anything special to
collectively own the copyright, and cites authors collaborating on a
book as an example--they don't have to form a corporation in order to
share the copyright on the resulting work.
Alain: Good example. Seems like a reasonable inference.
Geoff Canyon: Just state the copyright as, "This work copyright 1999 by
Joe, Mary, Bob, etc."
Alain: We have a problem here though. It will be difficult to attribute
a precise author for work done collectively. Who gets mentionned? In
what order? If a hundred people participated, do they all get cited?
If, instead, we decide to declare that OODL is the Copyright Holder,
nothing is solved either because the membership of the OODL is in
perpetual motion.
Geoff Canyon: Still check with a lawyer--my wife's smart, but she's not
legally allowed to offer this as bona fide legal advice.
Alain: A cautious disclaimer ... smart thinking!
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
