Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!indri!uflorida!novavax!rwright
From: rwright@novavax.UUCP (Ronald K. Wright)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Quoting from articles?
Message-ID: <1418@novavax.UUCP>
Date: 5 Aug 89 11:31:41 GMT
References: <16006@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: rwright@novavax.UUCP (Ronald K. Wright)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Univ of Miami,Sch of Med,Dept of Path,Medical Examiners Office via Nova University novavax
Lines: 36

In article <16006@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> slin@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Steven Philip Lin) writes:
>What is the legality of quoting from articles?  The people at the company 
>I work at are extremely interested in people's comments about their products.
>They would like to quote or perhaps paraphrase articles in their ads, reports,
>marketing, etc.  Is it legal to just extract articles without getting the
>consent of the author?  Or, must we consider posted articles to be
>published works with all rights reserved by the poster?

In the words of the immortal sage...obtain competent legal counsel.

Now with that disclaimer aside, and recognizing that this is free legal
advice, and cetainly not worth much more than that:

The latest revision of the Federal statutes on copyright seem to make
the sort of general publication such as this fall from copyright unless
first copyrighted.

I did research on the question for myself as to whether I could subsequently
copyright something I had posted on the net and my conclusion was that I
probably could not.  This is not a very well defined area of the law both
new and unique.

Therefore, I think you can quote or paraphrase and treat the material as
public domain.  However, if you get sued would you let me know?

If I were advising, I would suggest that you obtain permission to quote, if
nothing else it is a nice thing to do.

c 1989 {all rights reserved} :-) ;-)

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R. K. Wright MD JD                       |  uflorida!novavax!medexam!rkw
Chief Medical Examiner		         |  uflorida!novavax!rwright
Associate Professor Pathology            |  
University of Miami School of Medicine   |  
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