Legal Protection
Scientific and critical editions can be protected by copyright as works of authorship if enough creativity/originality is provided. The mere addition of a word or substitution of a term with another one that results to be more correct, usually does not achieve such level of originality/creativity. All the notes accounting for the analysis and why and how such changes have been made represent a different work autonomously copyrightable if the other requirements are satisfied. In the European Union critical and scientific editions may be protected also by the relevant neighboring right that protects critical and scientific publications of public domain works as made possible by art. 5 of the Copyright Term Directive. Not all EU member States have transposed art. 5 into national law.
Read more about this topic: Textual Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or protection:
“Hawkins: The will is not exactly in proper legal phraseology. Richard: No: my father died without the consolations of the law.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Without infringing on the liberty we so much boast, might we not ask our professional Mayor to call upon the smokers, have them register their names in each ward, and then appoint certain thoroughfares in the city for their use, that those who feel no need of this envelopment of curling vapor, to insure protection may be relieved from a nuisance as disgusting to the olfactories as it is prejudicial to the lungs.”
—Harriot K. Hunt (1805–1875)