Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Great site you have here! Anyway, I have a little question about the copyright status of a title "The Inimitable Jeeves" by British author P. G. Wodehouse, and I would love if you could tell me if it's PD or at least give me your learned opinion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inimitable_Jeeves

It's a collection of short stories. As you can see, although the book was published in 1923 both in England and the U.S., the stories were all first published in 1921 and 1922 in various magazines, and furthermore, I found no trace of a copyright renewal of this book in the U.S. copyright renewal database for books published between 1923 and 1964, so am I right to assume that this work is or should be in the public domain in the United States? What do you think? Please do let me know.

Many thanks in advance for your reply...


Asked on 2/05/11, 12:14 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Nancy Delain Delain Law Office, PLLC

It may well be that the book is now in the public domain; I would call the Copyright Offices in Great Britain ( http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy.htm ) and in the US ( www.copyright.gov ) to determine the copyright status. A quick phone call to the source of the protection can save a LOT of headaches and some major expense should the work still be covered by copyright.

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Answered on 2/07/11, 4:50 pm


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