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Jun 23, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

No good can come of the Dutch language.... :pipe:

Can anyone tell me what the situation is with copyright currently? For the uninitiated, the situation was that HPL work published during his lifetime were due to leave copyright in the 1990s? 2000s? but Arkham House was claiming it had renewed copyright so that everything was still copyrighted. Previously unpublished work stays copyrighted by the first publisher for a period, so the letters are all still copyrighted. Has the copyright situation been clarified or is it still a mess?

I'd say it's pretty clear there all PD, based on the term for both unpublished work and registration and renewal requirements.

Joshi claims that as of 2008 everything is in the public domain (using Life+70). Truthfully I think most were already PD due to the fact that the Copyright Act of 1909, under which all of HPL's published works are governed, was very anal about registration and renewal requirements, which most genre magazines wouldn't spend the money to do (and incidentally Roger Corman wouldn't either).

This chart can give you a brief idea of the various potential dates and how unpublished works can work (and regular works too).
https://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Type of Work
Copyright Term
What was in the public domain in the U.S. as of 1 January 20153
Unpublished works
Life of the author + 70 years
Works from authors who died before 1945
Unpublished anonymous and pseudonymous works, and works made for hire (corporate authorship)
120 years from date of creation
Works created before 1895
Unpublished works when the death date of the author is not known4
120 years from date of creation5
Works created before 18955

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