On 01/27/2014 01:21 PM, Greg Newby wrote:
Thanks for this, John. I'm attaching the scans of the
title page & verso for this item, which was cleared in 2003.
Am I correct in thinking that your research indicates the
1922 date in the publication is incorrect, and that it was
actually from 1934?
Thanks for this. The page images you give don't seem to give
new evidence for an earlier publication, but they *might* indicate
a possible loophole for public domain status. It's kind of a complicated
one, though, so you'll want to check with your legal counsel if you
plan to rely on it.
The title and verso you post are from a 1978 reprint by
Barrie and Jenkins (successor to Herbert Jenkins). Per the McIlvaine
bibliography, the original Herbert Jenkins book actually came out 5 Oct 1934.
The first US edition, titled _Brinkley Manor_, came out 15 Oct 1934;
both are preceded by the 1933-1934 serial in the Saturday Evening Post,
a US publication.
Barrie and Jenkins was later acquired by Hutchinson, which is the
publisher of the reprint that I first saw had the wrong notice;
your copy predates the reprint I saw, but still appears inaccurate.
Hutchinson in turn has been swallowed up into what is now the Bertelsmann
stable of publishers.
On review, I notice that Circular 3 from the US Copyright Office suggests that
an incorrect early year in a notice could shorten a copyright term to the
maximum term implied by the year. (See pages 4-5 in
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf .) Publishers did have
a grace period to correct mistakes, but if your reprint's from 1978, and
Hutchinson was still putting out reprints with the wrong copyright date in 1986
(as another entry in McIlvaine's bibliography indicates) then they might
have gone past the grace period (mentioned in the same circular as
5 years). Furthermore, the first publication of this work was in the
US, and the first book publication in the US came out within 30 days of the
first UK book publication, so GATT copyright restorations probably
wouldn't apply.
In short, it's possible that the 1922 copyright date included on the
official publisher's editions from 1978 to at least 1986 might have
made this book's copyright expire in the US at the end of 1997, like
other 1922 copyrights; and the circumstances of this work's 1930s US
publications might prevent the copyright from later being restored by GATT.
But I'm not a lawyer, and this is a somewhat complicated case to make. If
you're planning on retaining this title, I'd highly recommend running this
information by your legal counsel to see what they think.
John
Thanks for your research into this. I believe you are correct
that the majority of resources point to a later publication date.
Pending your response, I agree it might be necessary to remove
this from the collection.
-- Greg
On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 11:24:12AM -0500, John Mark Ockerbloom wrote:
As far as I've been able to determine, _Right Ho, Jeeves_
is *not* in the public domain, and this etext and #10554
(the plain text version of this book) should be withdrawn
(unless Gutenberg has permission from Wodehouse's estate).
The problem seems to stem from some recent reprints (such
as from Hutchinson) that state that the story was first published
in Great Britain by Herbert Jenkins Ltd in 1922, and give
a copyright date of 1922. I'm guessing this was the information
Gutenberg used to clear this book, since 1922 copyrights have
expired in the US.
However, the statements in the reprints are inaccurate.
According to McIlvaine et al's _P. G. Wodehouse: A Comprehensive
Bibliography and Checklist_, Herbert Jenkins was indeed the first
publisher of the story in book form, but it was not published
until 1934. Moreover, the story's first publication was actually
as a magazine serial, running in the Saturday Evening Post from
Dec. 23, 1933 to Jan. 27, 1934.
(I've also found no edition predating 1933 either in WorldCat, OCLC's
union catalog of libraries in North America and elsewhere, or in
COPAC, the British union catalog. There are a few editions marked
"1922" in WorldCat, but on closer inspection they all turn out to be
recent reprints.)
Copyrights to the Saturday Evening Post were routinely renewed.
The renewals for the issues in which the installments of "Right-Ho
Jeeves" first appeared can be found on these scanned Catalog of
Copyright Entries pages:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015085477332;view=1up;seq=183
and
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015085477332;view=1up;seq=414
(I am not a lawyer, but I've been assuming, and I think Project Gutenberg
assumes as well, that renewal of a periodical issue's copyright also renews
the copyright of content that first appears there.)
Wikisource has recently withdrawn its copy of _Right-Ho, Jeeves_ due to
copyright concerns, which is what tipped me off to the potential problem.
I recommend that Project Gutenberg review the status of this work as well.
John Mark Ockerbloom
On 08/13/2008 04:38 PM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote:
Audio: Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse 26303
[Audio reading by Mark Nelson ]
[Link: http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/3/0/26303 ]
[Files: 26303.txt; 26303-mp3.mp3; 26303-ogg.ogg; 26303-m4b.m4b;
26303-spx.spx ]
Thanks to Mark Nelson
and Librivox (www.librivox.org)
Josh
