Who owns the copyright to public domain novels that have been translated?

[David G. Smith]

Ok, I have been presented with a nineteenth century novel that a producer wants to make into a movie. The novel was first published in a language other than English. The English version that I am reading has a copyright posted to the company that published the first English language version of the novel. My question is, does the company that translated the novel into English own all of the rights to the work if it is now produced in English as a film? How would I get around this? Where can I go to get an official answer about this without spending a sizable sum of money to a lawyer to do a rights search? Would we be able to secure a distribution deal on the film without a high dollar sign off from a rights attorney? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Gary Huff]

I think your best bet will be to find a lawyer who deals with this kind of law and pay them for their time. This is an Internet forum and no legal advice can be given here without a pretty big disclaimer that it could totally be worthless.

 

[David G. Smith]

I think your best bet will be to find a lawyer who deals with this kind of law and pay them for their time. This is an Internet forum and no legal advice can be given here without a pretty big disclaimer that it could totally be worthless.

Oh I know, but some direction could be a big help.

 

[Paul Hudson]

A lawyer is always advised. However, I believe the works become public 75 years after the passing of the author. This is only true of US copyright laws. It sounds as if your situation may be more tricky as copyrights may have been applied for in two or more jurisdictions. Once again, I am not a lawyer and I would not take my advice alone on something like this.

 

[David G. Smith]

A lawyer is always is advised. However, I believe the works become public 75 years after the passing of the author. This is only true of US copyright laws. It sounds as if your situation may be more tricky as copyrights may have been applied for in two or more jurisdictions. Once again, I am not a lawyer and I would not take my advice alone on something like this.

Yeah, that is what I thought, the original copy right is for the life of the author plus 75 years. This kind of stuff will drive ya crazy, ya know?

 

[Barry_Green]

Assuming that you can verify that the copyright has expired on the original novel in its original language: Hire someone to do your own translation from the original public domain novel and you should be good to go. They can own the rights to their translation, but you can own the rights to your translation.

It's like if Ansel Adams took a photo of Yellowstone, he owns the copyright to that picture. And if you were standing right next to him and took your version of that same shot, you own the rights to your version of that picture.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if this wouldn't hold up.

 

[Cassius]

They own a copyright to their printed version and nothing else. Who's to say you didn't have a guy who spoke the original language tell you what the story is about, or read it to you at some point? No one. So there's no claim. Copyright is not language dependent and the story doesn't change ownership just because of that. However, you do need to be totally sure that the work is public domain. If it wasn't originally published in English I'd guess it was published in another county that may have its own ways of looking at things.

 

[David G. Smith]

Assuming that you can verify that the copyright has expired on the original novel in its original language: Hire someone to do your own translation from the original public domain novel and you should be good to go. They can own the rights to their translation, but you can own the rights to your translation.

It's like if Ansel Adams took a photo of Yellowstone, he owns the copyright to that picture. And if you were standing right next to him and took your version of that same shot, you own the rights to your version of that picture.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if this wouldn't hold up.

Yeah, that is the way I figured would be the best way to go, just do our own translation. The original, written in Russian in the 1840's or 1850's, is most definitely in the public domain. So, does anyone know a Russian language scholar, with expertise in the 19th century, who is looking for some side cash?

 

[Paul Hudson]

Yeah, that is the way I figured would be the best way to go, just do our own translation. The original, written in Russian in the 1840's or 1850's, is most definitely in the public domain. So, does anyone know a Russian language scholar, with expertise in the 19th century, who is looking for some side cash?

Nyet!

 

[David G. Smith]

Ok, how about this... just speculating about a hypothesis.... Let's say we use Google Translator to translate a public domain work from another language into English... Do you think that Google would want a cut?!!! :cheesy::furious3::shocked:


EDIT: Ok, the above is asked with tongue firmly in cheek! ... But put that into an Aaron Sorkin screenplay and I bet it would be a winner!