[Fwd: RE: Copyright text, and javadoc license]

[Ralph Goers <Ra...@dslextreme.com>]

Here is another post from Larry at about the same time that I found
interesting as I know we do this a lot.

Ralph

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	RE: Copyright text, and javadoc license
Date: 	Sat, 5 Mar 2005 16:15:02 -0800
From: 	Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com>
Reply-To: 	<lr...@rosenlaw.com>
Organization: 	Rosenlaw & Einschlag
To: 	'Joel West' <sv...@gmail.com>, <sk...@apache.org>,
<le...@apache.org>



> Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The
> Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

The date should be the "year of first publication of the work." 17 USC
401(b(2). In the example you cited, the author was probably indicating that
different parts of the work had different first years of publication. It
isn't necessary to do that.

In a collective work copyright such as for the Apache collection of
software, the year of first publication of the collection is sufficient.
When an entire new project is added, the date of the first publication of
the collective work will change to reflect that new collective work.

Since I recommend that you not change the copyright notices on the
individual contributions, the date of first publication of those
contributions will be evident from their own individual copyright notices.
So the copyright on a contribution may expire sooner than the copyright on
the collective work that contains it. (Neither will expire in my lifetime,
thanks to Congress.)

The statement "All rights reserved" is a throwback to the old days when
different copyright procedures existed in Latin America and other places. It
is not necessary.

/Larry

Lawrence Rosen
Rosenlaw & Einschlag, technology law offices (www.rosenlaw.com)
3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482
707-485-1242  ●  fax: 707-485-1243
Author of “Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom 
               and Intellectual Property Law” (Prentice Hall 2004)
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joel West [mailto:svosrp@gmail.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 12:57 PM
> To: lrosen@rosenlaw.com; skitching@apache.org; legal-discuss@apache.org
> Subject: RE: Copyright text, and javadoc license
> 
> On 8:24 AM -0800 3/5/05, Lawrence Rosen doth scribe:
> >In all
> >such cases, the only legitimate ASF copyright notice is:
> >
> >Copyright 2005 Apache Software Foundation.
> 
> Larry,
> 
> In both business and open source it is common to see
> 
> Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The
> Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
> 
> Is this the difference that Apache is a collective work copyright -- and
> that BSD (and commercial products) what is being copyrighted is an
> original work and a series of derivative works being made by adding new
> original works?
> 
> Joel
> 
> 
> --
> Joel West
> Silicon Valley Open Source Research Project
> 	http://www.cob.sjsu.edu/OpenSource/
> 
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