Klarinet Archive - Posting 000032.txt from 2010/07

From: Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Sheet music copyright
Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:11:05 -0400


Okay, but how did the case end, finally? I found the whole thing to be int=
eresting, if more than a little laborious. It isn't nearly as interesting,=
though, as the Feist Publications, Inc. vs. Rural Telephone Services, Inc.=
case of 1991 because the "sweat of the brow" argument was rather thrown ou=
t and the prose considerably more straightforward, in my opinion. Over and=
over again in the text of Sawkins vs. Hyperion is the thought that "Dr. Sa=
wkins worked really, really hard on his editions for about 300 hours."

Admittedly, Sawkins vs. Hyperion was in England and Feist vs. Rural in the =
U.S., so the view about the importance of the "sweat of the brow" as regard=
s copyright is shown to be different.

In any case, I get to the end to read "Conclusion =

It follows that there will be judgment =

for the Claimant in relation to his editions of La Grande Pi=E8ce =

Royale, the Te Deum and the Venite, but not the Panis
Angelicus. Absent agreement, I will hear Counsel on the =

question of the form of relief to be granted and costs." =

What was the judgment finally? Was it large enough to justify Dr. Sawkins'=
suit, or would it have been more prudent of him to work under contract for=
some estimated amount of time to prepare the score in the beginning, to la=
ugh all the way to the bank and to move onward and upward?

Oliver

> Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 11:35:17 +0200
> From: joseph.wakeling@-----.net
> To: klarinet@-----.com
> Subject: Re: [kl] Sheet music copyright
> =

> On 07/04/2010 11:59 PM, Martin Baxter wrote:
> > J understand that if you (photo)copy a modern edition of Mozart that,
> > although the music is out of copyrite, both the editorial markings and
> > the physical appearance of the page are still likely to be in copyrite
> > and thus both the publisher and the editor have their rights infringed.
> =

> This is an area that I only recently started looking at in any detail.
> It's true what you say, but my understanding is that the copyright for
> scholarly/urtext editions (at least for the musical text; forewords,
> afterwords etc. would be different) may be of a shorter term than for an
> entirely original work:
> http://imslp.org/wiki/Public_domain#Urtext_or_Critical_Editions
> =

> ... and even then, a copyright claim would probably depend on the type
> of changes made: minor editorial alterations may not be enough. (Note
> that IMSLP is based in Canada, where they have a higher 'originality
> threshold' than many other countries; this certainly seems like an
> aspect of copyright law that is strongly non-uniform across different
> territories.)
> =

> On the other hand you may recall the case a few years ago where Hyperion
> Records lost an expensive court case over the question of whether they
> had to pay performance fees to the editor of scholarly editions of
> compositions by Michel Richard Delalande (1657--1726): the level of
> artistic inventiveness necessary to produce the editions was held to be
> sufficiently great that it was ruled to count, in copyright and
> performance terms, as an original work.
> http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=3D/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2004/153=
0.html
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