[sword-devel] Tyndale and Powis Smith Bibles

[Patrick Narkinsky]

> 
> I'm pretty sure Tyndale would have fallen out of copyright, but I don't know
> about the Powis Smith edition.  I'm curious to know whether any of you are
> aware of copyright law extending in some manner to the producers of an
> electronic edition.  If I type in a book that has fallen in the public
> domain, do I own a copyright on the electronic edition or does it remain in
> the public domain?  I had believed the latter but have seen some people
> claiming copyright on electronic editions based solely upon the fact that
> they did the typing.

IANAL.  

But, as I understand the law, the simple act of typing in the etext should
not be enough to claim copyright on it.  For copyright to be viable on
something, it has to be a "significant original work" -- it could be
argued that typesetting constituted such a work, but I don't think many
courts would go along with simple typing it in being an original work.

Of course, they did allow a patent of the formula "x^2 + y^2 = z^2" as
applied to computer graphics at one point, so who knows?

Patrick