From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 10:45:37 +0000

Sorry.  I hit reply too soon and did not finish my message.

The citation for the case about restoring copyright in works of
foreign origin, which I meant to include, is Golan v. Holder from
2012.

As for the issue of handwriting, it is really not relevant.  Suppose
three people are writing an article together and one of them hand
writes her sections.  That content is later combined with the
contributions of the other two authors in to a single, unified whole.
Under our law, the copyright in the entire work, because it was
intentionally a single entity, would be unified, shared equally buy
the three authors, and would reach back to encompass the content of
the handwritten sections.  Thus one of the coauthors could elect to
publish the whole article without the permission of the others (as
happened in Weinstein v. University of Illinois).  The existence of a
handwritten manuscript of part of the work would not change that.

The issue, of course, in the Anne Frank case, is intent and whether a
court should accept the claim that the Diary is a joint work.  An
excellent analysis, which details the real reasons this claim should
be rejected, can be found at:

http://www.authorsalliance.org/2015/11/17/anne-frank-and-the-lasting-legacy-of-the-public-domain/

Kevin

Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Director of Copyright and Scholarly Communications
Duke University Libraries
Durham, NC 27708
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