Public Domain Work

Whenever you want to use a public domain work in your business, you should consider

getting the work certified by the copyright office.  The next question, then, is whether you

should hire a lawyer to do so..There is a lot of ‘research’ work and copyright checks that you can carry out yourself (or

pay someone to carry them out for you) without having to go through legal hassles. In the end, you will only need a lawyer if you violate the copyright law.  Even then, there

are certain grey areas where the law is not so clear, and your own interpretation might be

at odds with the court’s interpretation, thus putting you in hot water.

So take the situation case by case. If you are sued, you will definitely need a lawyer. Apart

from that, the best bet is to stick to guaranteed public domain works. If you can verify with

certainty that a work’s copyright has not been renewed (provided the work was published

before 1964), then you can safely consider it public domain. Similarly, if something was

published without a copyright notice before 1978, it is in the public domain as well.The only glitch comes when you launch your own derivative work of another copyrighted

work or a work whose status you cannot determine through research. There is also a

problem if you work with unpublished works. In these situations, it is best to hold a

counseling session with an intellectual property lawyer before taking any definitive

business steps.

Many people get discouraged by high attorney costs. On the other hand, you have to

weigh all your costs (research, copyright checks, attorney fees, production, marketing, etc)

against your expected profits and then decide whether it is worth the investment or not. If

you find a killer niche which can easily bring you a high monthly income, maybe spending

a few hundred dollars to protect yourself from litigation isn’t that bad after all.Copyright issues only arise for works that are unpublished and works published after 1922.

I’d suggest that you start off with pre-1923 published works even if they bring in smaller

profits (the idea is to build multiple income streams). Then, once you have a constant

stream of income, you can make bigger investments and move into the unpublished and

post 1922 works.And of course, avoid copying trademarks for commercial purposes. Even if you

significantly change it, chances are that you will be slapped with a lawsuit faster than you

can say: “Do I need a lawyer?”

Thresa Land is a writer for UniformHaven.com which offers cherokee scrubs, urbane scrub tops and lab coat as well as a lot of other items.