It may not be possible to copyright them, since they are just a collection of sacrifices and combinations in the public domain. I wonder if he tried. Personally, I would like to copyright the classic bishop sacrifice and charge a royalty to everyone who uses it.
Fred Reinfeld copyrights
Sort:
Estragon wrote:
Most likely, his heirs missed renewing the copyrights on these two at some point.
Yup, horses before zebras.
Estragon wrote:
They had to be copyrighted - no book publisher would have put out a chess book with the limited audience in 1955 without it.
While the games and positions are considered public domain, the act of collecting them and adding even brief notes is copyrightable. Most likely, his heirs missed renewing the copyrights on these two at some point.
I rather doubt the estate missed renewing the copyright as that would be pretty incompetent. Feist v. Rural, wasn't decided until 1991. So a copyright probably would be granted in 1955, but not after 1991.
[COMMENT DELETED]
Estragon wrote:
Are these in fact the same book, offered under different titles? Reinfeld's books were sometimes retitled to try to boost sales.
blake78613 ~ I am not familiar with the book[s] in question but if Reinfeld included any analysis or commentary in giving the solutions, Feist would not apply. That case would only control if he put up the positions with nothing more than a key move for each. It doesn't take much to constitute copyrightable original content.
It has been a few years since I looked at the book, but the bulk of the book is the Positions and the winning variation which generally was the game continuation or known analysis (I don't think any of the analysis is original). The book is divided into sections about various themes and there is a little introductory language to each section. Reinfeld could have dashed the commentary off in about 15 minutes. While you could copyright the commentary, you could duplicate the book without the commentary and the loss would be negligible. In fact I have seen inter-net downloads that have done exactly that.
Jul 18, 2012
0
#7
The reason I'm curious is because you can find copies of these books all over the Internet.
Actually, these books may still be under copyright. Before 1978, copyrights were for 28 years, renewable for another 28 years (if the holder applied for it). In 1978 Congress made significant changes: if the item was under copyright at that time, the copyright was automatically extended for another period, I think 50(?) years. (In music, the cutoff year is 1923 -- music published before then is considered public domain; any music published from 1923 onward must be checked.) The only real way to know is to contact the copyright holder...
This is strange. Many (perhaps most) of Reinfeld’s books are under copyright:
http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?Search_Arg=Reinfeld+Fred&Search_Code=NALL&PID=QHcbv__u7FIH9_HKwnc-oj5fd&SEQ=20120717173256&CNT=25&HIST=1
However, 1001 Brilliant Chess Sacrifices and Combinations and 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate (both published in 1955) are not under copyright.
I wonder why that is. Those two are arguably his best-selling books.