[Heathkit] BAMA and Heathkit docs???

[Glen Zook]

Under the Berne Convention on copyrights the length of a copyright was 70 years for materials produced for hire (such as manuals).  However, several years ago the Congress of the United States extended the length of copyrights in the United States to 95 years.  This was signed into law by President William Jefferson Clinton.  The law was enacted basically at the request of Sony Pictures because various older movies were losing copyright protection and therefore were becoming available for distribution on DVD without the payment of any royalties.  This amendment to the Copyright Law of the United States of America was named the "Bono Amendment" in honor of the recently deceased (at the time) Representative from the State of California Sonny Bono.

Under the Berne Convention the copyrights for other things (i.e. books, magazine articles, and so forth) is now for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years.  This was not affected by the Bono Amendment.

Now the fact that under United States copyright law the length of time has been extended to 95 years is not recognized by the other signatories to the Berne Convention and, as such, only the 70 year copyright is recognized.  However, since a copyright expires at midnight on December 31 of the final year of copyright that means that only items with a copyright expiration of 1938 or before are recognized as being in the public domain internationally or 1913 in the United States.

There were various provisions in the copyright law concerning time limits on older copyrights.  That is they would have to be renewed.  However, it is my understanding that under present law those copyrights were renewed.  

You have to remember that something is automatically copyrighted when produced.  There is NO obligation to record a copyright with any agency.  Recording only makes it easier to obtain damages when copyright violations occur.

Copyrights can be bought and sold.  This happens every day.  For example, although most magazines only purchase first publication rights and often first reprint rights (the copyright remains the property of the author), the ARRL demands full transfer of the copyright to that organization which is definitely their right.  Although the Heath Company has been sold several times and various divisions split from the whole, the present Heathkit Company located now in Benton Harbor, Michigan, retained the copyrights to all of the manuals produced by the Heath Company and sold as part of the Heathkit line of equipment.  Therefore, they had every right to dispose of those copyrights as they did.

Since the copyrights were sold the present owner of the copyrights can exercise his rights to protection which can include either preventing others from selling additional copies of the manuals (what happened before the transfer of ownership is not subject to the desires of the new owner) or else getting a royalty payment for each manual sold.

Before the matter is finally settled it could get pretty "nasty" for those companies who do provide copies of the Heathkit manuals.  Also, even if the manuals were to be distributed by an "off shore" entity, there could definitely be a recourse to the copyright owner if the country in which the website is registered is signatory to the Berne Convention.  Most, but not every country in the world, are signatory to this agreement.

I am not a copyright attorney.  However, since I do hold over 1000 copyrights I definitely do keep up with the copyright law.  Now I certainly wish that the Heathkit company had released the manuals into the public domain.  Unfortunately, they chose to sell the copyrights instead of releasing them and such is definitely their privilege.

How the matter eventually "plays out" remains to be seen.  But, I definitely would not "hold my breath" waiting for free distribution as in the past.

Glen, K9STH

Website:  http://k9sth.com


--- On Wed, 1/14/09, Dan Pividal <dpividal at tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

From: Dan Pividal <dpividal at tampabay.rr.com>

Did I get this right? Because some company bought the educational material, that was once sold by a company that used to sell radio equipment but has been out of that business for over 30 years, we can no longer download Heathkit manuals from BAMA. If this is so we need to start our own files. What is it with BAMA? The copyrights on those manuals must be expired by now. Does the company that bought the rights to the material plan on selling the manuals or just keep them out of the hand of HAMS? Does anyone have more information on this?