[Heathkit] Heathkit Manual Copyright

[k2cby]

As a practicing lawyer who does occasional copyright work I have to tell you
that I am of two minds about the question of copyrighted manuals.

 

First of all, Heathkit was well within its legal rights to copyright its
manuals. Likewise, Don Peterson of Data Professionals was well within his
legal rights to purchase Heathkit’s copyrights and to start a business
republishing the manuals and selling them.

 

On the other hand, however, I devoutly wish that neither of these
transactions had ever taken place.

 

Heathkit – and almost all other manufacturers – copyrighted their manuals,
schematics, etc. for the purpose of preventing their designs from being
ripped off by a competing manufacturer – not to protect the intellectual
content of the manuals themselves (Solder a 2.7k ½-watt resistor to S-3, pin
11).

 

 Heathkit was not in business to sell manuals. Its business was to sell
built-it-yourself electronic products in kit form, and the manual was merely
part of the kit – just like the 2.7k ½-watt resistor and the front panel
(which, by the way, Heathkit could have protected by a design patent). This
is not to say that Heathkit didn’t sell manuals separate and apart from the
kits. (I bought one myself when I was trying to decide whether to buy the
kit or a competing manufactured product.) Nobody can suggest that Heathkit
ever did more than break even selling manuals alone or that manual sales
were more than a tiny fraction of its business revenues.

 

Ultimately, I suppose, we are victims of the fact that Heathkit is no longer
in business – or at least no longer in the business of selling electronic
kits. In the liquidation of the company, Heathkit’s manual copyrights were
just another asset – like the name “Heathkit” – to be sold off to anyone
willing to pay for it. This, of course, stands in marked contrast  to the
companies still in business – like Simpson, Fluke, and Hewlett-Packard (I
still can’t get used to calling it Agilent) who make their manuals freely
available online and defunct companies like General Radio who have
relinquished (or do not enforce) their copyrights.

 

Well, that’s the story. It may not be pretty, but it is legal. 

 

I do, however, invite a better copyright lawyer than I to investigate the
question of how far the “fair use” doctrine may apply to the case of
republishing schematic diagrams and – by way of example – alignment
procedures. 

There may also be a question of whether Heathkit was attempting to use
copyright law to protect something that can only be protected by a patent.

 

Miles B. Anderson, K2CBY
16 Round Pond Lane
Sag Harbor, NY 11963
Tel.: (631) 725-4400

Fax.: (631) 725-2223
e-mail: k2cby at optonline.net