Copyright issues when journal is defunct Consider a seminal paper published 40 years ago in a journal that went belly up 30 years ago. Many cite it but hardly anyone has seen it. Can I expect trouble if I make an electronic copy available on my blog?
Factual assumptions ohwilleke's answer is entirely correct. However, it makes factual assumptions based on the standard meaning of &quot;journal&quot; and &quot;author&quot;, which I believe to be unwarranted. From the question, it seems likely that we are talking about a scientific paper, which operates under a very different economic and legal model. I am going to assume that: the authors sent a draft of the paper, the preprint, to the journal editor; the journal editor sent the draft to external experts (the reviewers); those reviewers, and possibly the editor, gave some feedback; the authors modified their draft based on that feedback to produce the final version; throughout all this, the authors, editor and reviewers agreed with the journal’s policies; the journal policies require a transfer of copyright to the publisher, a legal entity that &quot;owns&quot; large number of journals and provides some technical services (article typesetting, maintenance of a web site with the journal contents, maintenance of DOIs, etc.); neither the authors, nor the editor, nor the reviewers received monetary compensation for their work (this is a key economic difference from non-academic journals, but as we shall see, it has little legal effect) In theory, all depends on the copyright release agreement When the author(s) submit a draft to a journal, they have to click through an agreement to release copyright. Such a clause could, in theory, be anything the authors and the publisher agreed that does not violate contract law. In practice, because the publishers are a small oligopoly, the agreements are more or less standardized. The &quot;sample publishing agreement&quot; given as example at https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/copyright (as downloaded on March 2, 2023) is more or less representative: I hereby assign to the Copyright Owner the copyright in the manuscript identified above (where Crown Copyright is asserted, authors agree to grant an exclusive publishing and distribution license) and any tables, illustrations or other material submitted for publication as part of the manuscript (the “Article”). This assignment of rights means that I have granted to the Copyright Owner the exclusive right to publish and reproduce the Article, or any part of the Article, in print, electronic and all other media (whether now known or later developed), in any form, in all languages, throughout the world, for the full term of copyright, and the right to license others to do the same, effective when the Article is accepted for publication. This includes the right to enforce the rights granted hereunder against third parties. The authors are the sole intellectual contributors to the preprint version, but a copyright release agreement could still bar them from publishing it. The vast majority of agreements between novel authors and publishing houses forbid the author from selling the book rights to another publisher or posting drafts of the novel on the author’s website (two actions that would result in greatly diminished sales for the publisher). The published version incorporate revisions where the reviewers and possibly the editor contributed significant intellectual contributions. Again, all depends on the copyright agreement - the publisher terms could in theory require that the reviewers and editors release their contribution under an irrevocable license to the authors. In practice, all goes to the publisher. The financial structure is irrelevant The fact that authors (and reviewers, and editors) are not paid by the publisher is irrelevant. Yes, a contract (in common-law countries) requires consideration from both sides; however, consideration needs not be monetary. There is not much doubt that publication of an article is &quot;consideration&quot;, at the very least because that is considered prestigious among a significant fraction of the population. In addition, there is ample evidence that funding agencies and university HR staff evaluate and promote scientists based primarily on the papers they publish in scientific journals. In practice, preprint rules are lax The vast majority of academic publishers allow authors to publish the preprint version although conditions vary (only the preprint, only on a personal website, only for a limited time, only after some embargo period, only if you cite the final article with the correct DOI, etc.). I would speculate that this is the result of cultural pressure. Many academics decided to post their articles (sometimes the preprint before sumbission, sometimes the published version) on the internet without much regard to pesky questions of copyright law, because they viewed publishers as gatekeeping greedy monopolistic parasites. The publishers decided to embrace the practice in order to be able to put some limits on it, rather than try to mass-fire lawsuits against the people who provided them with free labor. Regardless of whether that speculation is correct, the current arrangement is not the inevitable result of legal rules, and publishers could conceivably decide to change their preprint sharing policies at any moment. Limitations to the copyright of research papers This section is quite obviously not exhaustive, but given that the original question does not specify a jurisdiction, I did not search beyond what I already know. In the united-states, works produced by employees of the federal government as part of their work duties are generally public domain (17 U.S. Code § 105; do note that subsection (b) means certain works produced by certain institutions still are under copyright). Hence, if the authors were both researchers at a federal research institution, the preprint is public domain and can be republished irrespective of the publisher’s will. (I am led to believe, however, that most US researchers are not employees of the federal governments, but rather of private or state universities.) In europe, as a result of public pressure against publishers (see &quot;greedy monopolistic parasites&quot;, above), the European Commission published non-binding guidelines (2012/417/EU) asking that there should be open access to publications resulting from publicly funded research as soon as possible, preferably immediately and in any case no later than 6 months after the date of publication, and 12 months for social sciences and humanities That (non-binding) recommendation has been adopted with varying adaptations in various EU countries. The exact implementation in a given country should be checked before relying on it. For instance, in France, article L533-4 du code de la Recherche allows authors (after the six or twelve months embargo period) to post the published version (not just the preprint), irrespective of what what signed with the publisher, as long as at least half of the funding for the research came from public funds. I will assume neither of those apply. The copyright owner is likely still around Academic journals are born and die regularly. However, academic publishers rarely do (Elsevier is almost 150 years old). As ohwilleke says, the copyright release contract signed 40 years ago is likely still valid; even if the publisher folded, it would apply to the publisher’s legal successor. (The question of how legal rights are liquidated in a bankruptcy would be an interesting question that I am not competent to answer; it is plausible that under certain circumstances the contract would be dissolved.) If the authors can access the copyright release they signed back when they submitted the article, you might be able to determine that posting the preprint or the final article is acceptable. (I realize that this is a fairly ludicrous hypothetical, given that the paper was published 40 years ago.) Otherwise, it is extremely likely that the publisher would be able to sue, even if the publication occurs with the authors’ full support. Whether they are likely to do so, and whether publishing anyway is ethical, are of course non-legal questions.
Here's where you went wrong legally: Suppose I legally obtain some digital image created by somebody else (e.g., by downloading from a public website). That, right there, is copyright infringement- unless the copyright owner has granted permission or the image is public domain you cannot copy it - this breaches "the right to make reproductions". By posting it on the web (assuming that it isn't itself an infringing copy) they have given implied permission for you to look at it in a web browser but not to copy it into a presentation even if that presentation is never presented. If it is presented then that makes the infringement worse - it adds breaches of "the right to communicate to the public" and "the right to use the work as a basis for an audiovisual work". How is this different from the computer wallpaper? It isn't. If you are using the one of the defaults that shipped with the OS then the license gives you permission. If you are using someone else's copyright without permission then it's a breach. There are defenses to copyright infringement but these are quite nationally variable - search this or other sites for "fair dealing" and "fair use".
It is possible to abandon copyright ... maybe. However, this game has not been abandoned. When the owner of the company was liquidated, the copyright became the legal property of the liquidator in trust for the creditors. It is for him or her to decide how to deal with the property but the copyright still exists until 70 years after the author(s) death. If you allow downloads you are breaching copyright unless you have permission (or you meet the Fair Dealing criteria - you probably don't). The person to seek permission from is the liquidator od the company. If you get sued they do not need to demonstrate financial loss - copyright claims can either be pursued for actual or statutory damages, that is, a fixed amount per violation. In addition, in egregious cases, copyright violation is a crime prosecutable by the state.
Probably Not The creator or owner of a piece of software does not in general have any copyright over the output when others run the software, unless that output is itself a derivative work of input supplied by the copyright owner, or forming part of the software. In this case the translation is a derivative work of the 19th century original, but that is assumed to be in the public domain. SAo google has no copyright on the resulting translation. But copyright protection is only available for &quot;original works of authorship&quot;. (See 17 USC 102 in the US, and similar laws elsewhere.) A machine-produced translation is not an original work, and it is surely not then work of the author of the overall book. However, the author would still have a copyright on the book as a whole. The legal situation is no different than if the author had simply quoted a 19th century work. One may incorporate public domain works into a later work, and that later work is still protected by copyright, provided that there is enough original contentr to make the work as a whole &quot;an original work of authorship&quot;. Others may use the PD [arts, or the original from which they are taken, but not the rest of the work (beyond what fair use would allow in any case). For example, I have made a number of posts here on LAW.SE. In several,of those I quoted sections from one of the numbers of The Federalist. That 19th century work is in the public domain. Anyone else may re-quote the passages I quoted from it. But that gives them no rights to use the rest of my work, except as the CC-BY-SA license or fair use permits. So the author would retain copyright on the book as a whole. But soemoen who merely quotes or uses the translated 19th century article but none of the original parts of the book would not be infringing that copyright. I say probably in the header, because I do not have any actual case-law to cite here. It is possible that some court has rules otherwise on the subject of the copyright on the output of a software tool, but I strongly doubt it.
There is a subtle difference between NSF policy and enforceable obligation. The primary stick that goes with the carrot is being excluded from future funding. Current policy does not generally force material in the public domain, but it is a possibility in "exceptional circumstances". There no doubt is a paper record somewhere in D.C. indicating whether such a codicil was added to any of these grants. NSF generally does not have contracts with individuals, they have contracts with institutions who have relations (typically employer-employee) with individuals, so even if there were a policy requiring works to be put in the public domain, NSF would have to go after the institution, who would have to go after the author. Since that would conflict with longstanding NSF policy on copyright, it is unlikely that they would want to pursue such an approach. The statement that McGraw-Hill Book Company announces that the material, which is copyrighted, will be available for use by authors and publishers on a royalty-free basis on or after April 30, 1970 is not itself a license, it is a suggestion that a license will com into existence. A present-tense declaration "this work is dedicated to the public domain effective April 30, 1970" can be interpreted as a license effective of a date certain. Similarly, "will be available to all publishers for use in English after December 31, 1970, and in translations after December 31, 1975" does not say that it is in the public domain effective of some date. One might say that the copyright statement is simply not well written and the author really intended the books to be in the public domain as of those dates. But without compelling evidence that the book was actually released into the public domain, a court is very unlikely to abrogate a person's property rights.
Maybe You linked to the publication of a patent application, not to a patent. Based solely on looking at the format of the number the answer would be, Yes, unless it eventually became an issued patent. As it happens, it did become issued patent US9066511B2. That would make the answer no. Since the application was filed before you started selling them, the fact that you were selling them in 2017 could not be used to challenge the patent. I say the answer is maybe because the patent has been disputed in court and I do not know if the outcome has left the patent valid. You can look this up at the USPTO Public PAIR. Then you need to search with either the patent number or the publication number. When you get to the record of the history of that application look at the Image File Wrapper tab.
Unless the work has entered the public domain (after the copyright expires, or if a copyright notice or renewal was omitted when these were required, or in other ways) there is always an owner of the copyright. If the copyright was retained by the author, who has died, than the author's heir(s) own it. (If there are no other heirs, it becomes the property of the state. This is known as escheating.) If the author has sold or assigned the copyright (say to a publisher) then the buyer or assignee owns it. If the owner is a business that has ceased to operate, but has not sold the copyright, then the shareholders or proprietor has the right to sell or license it (technically the business still owns it). If the business goes through legal bankruptcy, the copyright would be sold, possibly as a part of "and all its other assets and good will", or else would escheat to the state. It can be hard to find the copyright to a work long unpublished. The original author may have died, and the author's heirs may be hard to track. The copyright may have been sold, and the sale may not have been properly recorded. In the US, the Copyright Office maintains records that try to identify the copyright owner of all registered copyrights. The office will search these, for a fee, but there is not always a correct or useful answer. Under current US law, if one cannot find the correct owner of a copyright, and secure permission to use it, one is simply out of luck (except for musing, where a compulsory license is available for some uses at a government-specified fee). Any use is then infringement (unless it is a fair use) and the owner could always turn up and sue. The term "orphan works" has been applied to works whose copyright owner is unknown and hard to find. The same term is also applied to works whose copyright holder is known, but which are long out of print and unlikely to be reprinted, particularly when there is no paying market for them. In the US, there have been several proposals for dealing with "orphan works" by granting a compulsory licensee for them, or by declaring them to be in the public domain, or by taxing them and declaring them to be PD if he tax goes unpaid. None of these have been passed into law in the US, nor have similar proposals been made law in any other country that I know of. (declaring Orphan works PD might cause a problem under the Berne Convention.) To be honest, as there is little economic value in orphan works, no one will spend much money or energy in lobbying for such a law, and the industries that make their money via copyright (music and film in particular) are often suspicious of and automatically oppose anything that weakens copyright in any way, or seems to. In any case, no such law has yet passed. (Edit I now learn that Canada and the EU have laws giving access to orphan works under some circumstances, and other countries may have such laws.) It is true that the owner of the copyright on an orphan work may well be unlikely to sue for infringement of that copyright. The owner may not even know that s/he owns the copyright. But a user could never by fully safe, because the owner (or a new owner after a transfer) could always choose to sue for any continuing infringement, and any past one if the statute of limitations has not run out. This answer is largely based on knowledge of US law, but I believe that this situation is basically the same in most countries.
Adam cannot simply void the contract because he has a chance to publish in a more prestigious journal. What he can do depends on the provisions of he contract to which Adam agreed. It is likely, but far from certain, that the agreement permits Adam to cancel it under specified circumstances. If it does, and if those circumstances now apply, Adam can cancel and then submit the paper to the other journal. It is possible that the contract gives he first journal (J1)_ exclusive rights only for a limited period of time. If this is so, and if that time has passed, then Adam may submit the paper to the other journal (J2) without violating the agreement. It is likely, but not certain, that the agreement has provisions permitting the paper to be republished in another journal. If it does, than Adam may republish by complying with those provisions. They will probably include a requirement that the J@ publication include a notice similar to this: This paper was originally published in J1 in the {date} issue. J2 would have to be willing to include such a notice. The agreement between Adam and J1 will specify some things that J1 must do, as well as things that Adam must do. If J1 has failed to carry out a significant part of its obligations, for example if it never published Adam's paper, Adam may be able to rescind the agreement for materiel breach. Exactly what failures on J1's part allow this varies by jurisdiction. Adam would be wise to consult a lawyer before taking this step. Adam may request permission from J1 if none of these situations applies, and J1 may give permission. It would probably insist on a notice like the one mentioned above. But J1 does not have to grant such permission. If none of the situations above apply, and Adam cannot get (or does not ask for) permission from J1, then submitting the paper to J2 would probably violate Adam's agreement with J1. J1 could sue Adam, and perhaps J2 also. If the people running J2 know of this situation, they may well refuse Adam's paper. Adam may be able to write a new paper, based on the same research as his original paper, perhaps with more recent research added. That would not be covered by Adam's agreement with J1, and he could submit that to J2.