Posted by John Wilson on December 23, 2017 at 17:45:48 user hugo.
In Reply to: Re: Public Domain posted by Magnus Smith on December 21, 2017 at 03:51:02:
Generally the copyright of a book (and the characters?) depends on the years (70 or 50) since death of the author and is not affected by a remake of a film. The stories of Arthur Conan Doyle (died 1930) are out of copyright and presumably can be freely used. The same story could be filmed in 2017 and again in 2018.
In America though works published in the United States prior to 1928 are all in the public domain. From 1928 to 1977 the period was 95 years from date of publication and could require renewal, hence the books in the S&A series could have different expiry years? The Wikipedia article below mentions a 2016 case law ruling that remastering of pre-1972 music extended copyright because of the work involved, but I do not know if this ruling extended to films? And would it apply to the original unremastered work? The 1998 "Sonny Bono" Copyright Extension Act extended copyright for works of corporate authorship like Disney’s Mickey Mouse films to the earlier of 120 years since creation or 95 years since publication.
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