For the years 1923 to 1963, with no renewals, those works would be subject to 28 years of copyright protection. Thus, the 1923 edition would have been in the public domain by 1952. Although the founding fathers had thought 14 years was plenty long for a copyright (28 with renewal), and both the length and renewal length had already been doubled since, between 1964 and 1998, media industry lobbyists managed to effectively abolish the old notion of the public domain. Works which had not entered the public domain by 1976 were granted automatic extensions en masse, the requirement to get an extension was removed, and copyright protection was again re-extended, so that, e.g., Mickey Mouse’s original appearance in “Steamboat Willie” would remain protected for 95 years (until 2023), and most of Paul McCartney’s copyrights will still last until at least 2085 (lifetime of the author + 70 years).
Publications which were released by 1935 and not renewed (expiring by 1963) seem quite safe, but it gets stickier after that, so publications from between 1936 and 1947 may require a little extra research. After 1 Jan 1978, when the '76 law kicked in, it’s hopeless. Anything published after 1977 will remain out of reach for the lifetimes of everyone old enough to remember when it came out.
Probably germane to the thread is the fact that before 1978, one had to actually go to a little bother to copyright something. It wasn’t automatically applied to everything, like it is now. One example, if you left out a copyright notice, your work was in the public domain from the moment you published it. Very little advertising was ever intentionally copyrighted, so if those pre-'78 catalogs don’t have copyright notices in them, they may never have been subject to copyright.
I went to the Stanford copyright renewals database and did a search for every title with rose or roses in it. Amongst the renewals, Nicholas’ Rose Manual of 1929 was renewed in 1957. His Year in the rose garden in 1963 and his Rose Odyssey in 1964. McFarland’s Roses of the World in color from 1936 was renewed in 64. Ethel Keays book of old roses was renewed in '62. At some point I bought a reprint of that. I looks like any other U.S. published book from earlier than 1936 was not renewed. That includes the Rose Annual.
Rose is a very popular word so it took a while to scan through all the options. This is what I found. A more recent edition of McFarland’s book, and his memoir would have been renewed later, as was the revised edition of Nicholas’ Rose Manual (38, 65). So they’ve got some years left in them.
I did not find any indication of renewals for Modern Roses series at all.
The point about copyright of catalogs is an interesting one. I find some individual photos with a copyright mark in a couple catalogs, presumably for photos loaned to the dealer by the originator. But otherwise they’re just blank of acknowledgments, without even an indication of who was the printer. I know some of the catalogs reprinted the same copy over and over for years. Most of those were from general seed and nursery companies and I didn’t bother to save.
Several years ago I bought the 1938 ARA just to be able to scan the article, “What Old Rose is This?” and post it online – which I did, and no angry lawyers contacted me. My copy disappeared from the Internet when I changed hosting companies a year or two later, but I see that the heritage rose folks now have that same article available here: http://www.theheritagerosesgroup.org/articles/what-rose-is-this.pdf This is an encouraging sign.
I also have the 1927, 1929 and 1935 volumes, and am thinking about scanning and posting them on archive.org, since their lapse of copyright seems clear enough, and doing so should make places like HMF a lot less skittish about accepting the illustrations from them. Not that any of this helps with the catalogs…
am thinking about scanning and posting them on archive.org
That would be shooting first no matter how you rationalize it.
Due diligence would include an inquiry to the ARS not only to ask their opinion but also to identify contacts to any potential successor to the publisher.
s_hardy, you are putting a lot of faith in the completeness of that one website and your ability to search it.
“In each round, the error rate for the database was found to be less than 1%, although in practice there is significant opportunity for user error or other problems in searching.”
The Stanford people did a good job of getting everything that was available from the copyright office. They did random tests of adequately sized samples and found an error rate below 1 % which seems satisfactory to me. So long as you are working from best available information, all you might be asked to do is to remove a particular illustration from a site. There is no publisher of anything except music so aggressive as to actually file a lawsuit over something where they know they couldn’t make even $100 at best. Original photos of Elvis or Marilyn Monroe might be worth something, but I don’t think Multnomah is in that league, beautiful as it is.
Something further to consider is that if something is members only, protected by a password, available for study, that is a different game. Universities post all sorts of stuff for students without infringing because they are neither selling it nor making it publicly available. You could ask a university lawyer about this side of things. I may try to check that out with a retired one.
Cathy, I think we can only go as far forward as 1964 because the rules get complicated after about that time. We can generally get fresh photos of roses still in commerce. It is the oldies that are missing from HMF. They are the ones where I have my suspicions about. Which is the real “LaFrance” for instance. If we believe pedigrees, it was fertile at one time. SO roses that are marketed as LaFrance but are totally sterile are really suspect. I’m sure there are other examples. Maybe fertility only happens in a certain climate which isn’t represented where I’ve been, as I found out with Frau Karl Druschki, getting seeds one year out of 40. But I doubt that is generally true.
Larry,
According to Dickson (1908), ‘La France’ was almost perfectly sterile.
In our experiments and in struggling with the qualities we have indicated, we felt convinced that La France would prove one of the most useful parents we could possible [sic] have, if we could succeed in making it produce seed. It was of course the opinion of most hybridisers that La France was sterile, and with this opinion we were for a long time inclined to agree, and indeed the best that could be said for it is this, that there is just the possibility that it may be fertilized.
A Fine Rose.
Out of many hundreds of crosses with this rose, only in one single instance did we succeed in making it produce seed, but we feel that the labour we spent was amply repaid, as the ultimate result of it was the introduction of Mrs. W. J. Grant, known to you as Belle Siebrecht, in our opinion one of the finest roses in cultivation, at least from the Britishers’ standpoint. In addition to this, we have always found from practical experience, the roses descended from this particular cross have always impressed their offspring with some at least of the more prominent qualities of the parents, and it was pursuing this particular line of breeding that enabled us to produce varieties, which from a British standpoint are ideal exhibition flowers, and at the same time the plants are floriferous and of excellent constitution. In this group we might mention Killarney, Mrs. Edward Mawley, Bessie Brown, Liberty, Lady Moyra Beauclerc, Lady Ashton, Mrs. David McKee, Dean Hole, Countess of Derby, Betty, Mrs. G. W. Kershaw, and last but not least Mildred Grant and William Shean, two of the finest exhibition roses at present in cultivation in Great Britain. Mildred Grant resulted from a seedling between Niphetos and Madame Willermoz in the first instance, crossed with a seedling of our own, which is not in commerce, and the system of which this is an instance applies pretty generally to all the better classes of roses introduced by us.
The Stanford Copyright Renewal data base is where I got this information. I forget if directly, or indirectly through one of the resources posted on their site, but not originated by them. Up into 1964 any renewal was good for just 28 more years. So 1963 renewals would have run out in 1991. Any renewal in 1964 would likely extend the total time to 95 years from the original under the law as it stands now. There were various delays and extensions up until 1976, which makes some of the calculations tedious.
For ARS publications we need to look inside the cover to see who is/was the copyright holder of any given year. We also have to consider fair use provisions. Even if under copyright, personal research and scholarly use of copies is not restricted. If you can locate a copyright holder, it is best to ask permission for something that is to be shared with others. If it is for educational purposes only, not for commercial use, they will generally grant it permission automatically. I’ve been a coauthor on a handbook which is distributed that way to high schools and other interested parties. A company sells it but copying is freely permitted, so long as copies are not resold to make money.