Re: Justice draws nigh

[Hyman Rosen]

On 5/12/2010 12:36 PM, RJack wrote:
> Absolutely not true. Erik Andersen may hold copyright in some
> contributed modifying code in a derivative work but he does not own any
> exclusive rights in "BusyBox 0.60.3." as a registered work.

Erik Anderson created a derivative work through his changes,
and he is therefore a copyright owner of this work. Creators
of derivative works own copyright in those works.

> "When an original author and an author of a derivative work are
> different, their respective rights are generally addressed by a contract
> between them.[24] In these situations, it is clear that two works have
> been created, requiring separate copyright registrations to preserve
> those rights in court."
> http://www.oblon.com/media/index.php?id=41#_ednref24

Correct. In the case of BusyBox, the agreement that replaces the
contract mentioned by this excerpt is the GPL, and if there were
a dispute between the prior authors and Erik Anderson, the prior
authors would need to register their version in order to sue. But
there is no copyright dispute between these authors (except that
one of the previous authors does not care to sue to protect his
copyright), so this is irrelevant. Erik Anderson registered a
version in which he holds copyright to sue infringers of that
copyright.