I’m writing a book (non-fiction) and would like to use some emails that were exchanged between a friend and I about five and a half years ago over an email list (a Yahoo!Group, to be exact). I have no idea if these emails are considered property of anyone… any trademark attorneys out there?
Your friend owns the copyright to their own words, just as you own the copyright to what you wrote. Neither are public domain.
Right. The thing I forgot to mention is that he died in 2000.
Then his heirs own the copyright. It’s unlikely that he specific bequeathed his copyright in his e-mail messages, but whoever got what was left over after specific bequests are taken out would have the rights.
There’s unlikely to be any real monetary value there, so those heirs are unlikely to sue. However, it would be polite to ask their permission to quote.
Of course, IANAL.
Argh, that’s what I feared. Thanks. (His next of kin weren’t very fond of him, and I’m inclined to think they wouldn’t even be happy with me contacting them).
Trademark doesn’t enter into this, unless your late friend registered a trademark (very few people do) and used it in one of his emails.
The concept of ‘Intellectual Property’ is used a lot these days, and it is, in my opinion, confusing the distinction between three/four very different things:
[ul]
[li]Copyright: The right to make substantial copies of a created work that exists in tangible form. The term ‘substantial’ doesn’t denigrate the right to make copies of small amounts of a work, or the right to make copies of the work as part of a critical or academic essay. ‘Created’ means that the work has to be the creation of someone: Facts are not covered, and mere listings of facts are also not covered. (For example, the name/number listings in phone books are not copyrightable.) ‘Tangible’ applies to anything you can reasonably think of except, perhaps, memory. Copyright adheres automatically, and does not have to be claimed or defended. It is only lost when it runs out, decades after the creator has died, or when the creator explicitly passes the work into the public domain.[/li][li]Trademarks are ‘marks of trade’; that is, they are distinguishing names, images, sounds, and colors that serve to differentiate brands in the marketplace. A trademark only applies in a specific field of trade: Apple Records can prevent any other record company from calling itself Apple, or anything likely to be confused with Apple, but it cannot prevent Apple Computers from using that name. Trademarks must be claimed and defended. A trademark is lost when it, like yo-yo or heroin, effectively becomes a common word. I don’t think there is any effective time limit on how long a trademark can be held.[/li][li]Patents are descriptions of a useful, new, and non-obvious process that grants the holder a temporary monopoly on being able to perform that process in exchange for releasing the details to the world at large via the publically-accessable patent database. The alternative to patents are trade secrets: The inventor keeps the process a closely-guarded secret and holds on to the monopoly as long as possible without legal help. Laws of nature and mathematical formulas are not patentable, as those are discovered as opposed to invented. Abstract ideas are also not patentable. Patents must be filed, and they run out 20 years after the initial filing date. I don’t know if a patent can be lost through non-defense. (I don’t think so.)[/li][li]Contracts can prevent people from sharing information that is not otherwise covered by copyrights, trademarks, or patents. NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) are effective at protecting trade secrets, which are not otherwise protected, and they can be used as a catch-all when a corporation wants to keep something a secret and has no other effective ways of doing so. Contracts vary widely. Nothing general can be said about them in this small space.[/li][/ul]
Brad Templeton explodes ten big copyright myths here. It’s worth a look-through, and he has plenty of other sites on the issue of copyright law in general.