Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

I recently formed an LLC specializing in selling reprints of old

service manuals (instructing the user in repairing construction

equipment such as loaders and backhoes) that were all produced before

1978. The manuals do not have any copyright notice printed on any of

the pages and therefore I am fairly certain that these service manuals

are within the public domain. My sales have been performing well and I

am now interested in reproducing several service manuals that were

produced by the CASE (loader/backhoe manufacturer) company that were

produced from between 1978 and 1989. I have found quite a bit on

information on the web regarding the legality of reproducing these

manuals, however, much of the information is conflicting. The manuals

do not have any copyright notice on them anywhere, and a web search on

the US Copyright Office website (link:

http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First)

does not yield any results... which leads me to conclude that the

service manuals are simply not copyright material. For your reference,

I am looking at reproducing service manuals for the following CASE

loader/backhoe models: 580C, 580B, 580CK. Would you recommend that I

simply play it safe and do not attempt to reproduce these service

manuals? Or do you think it is a safe bet that these manuals are

within the public domain?

The Cornell University Law website indicates the following:

Works created in the U.S. from 1978 to 1 March 1989 that were

Published without notice, and without subsequent registration within 5

years have no copyright term. They are in the public domain due to

failure to comply with required formalities. The link can be found

here:

http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Bottom line: The manuals were printed between the years 1978 and 1989.

These manuals indicate when they were "printed", however, they simply

do not have any notice of copyright on them anywhere, not even online.

Please let me know what you think and thanks for your help!


Asked on 3/12/10, 3:00 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Mark S. Moroknek Kelly & Curtis, PLLC.

Because of the technical nature of the material in most service manuals, such manuals are almost more in the nature of a technical "product," and are generally not copyrighted, although they could have been. I would suggest writing to the manufacturer to determine whether there is any trademark or patent protection, still in existence, and if so, would they license your usage.

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Answered on 3/19/10, 9:37 am


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