Copyright

[dizzyme]

Last week, came across a Will dated 1825, on Ancestry for someone I was researching & of course, the writing is not the easiest! Then by chance found a transcription of the Will on Cornwall OPC, it was copyrighted. It does state that you can use it for your own personal use.

Not knowing a lot about copyright laws, it has made me wonder if you can actually copyright public document such as a Will, because who's to say your transcription of it, is actually the one that is copyrighted & how would distinguish between the two?

Hope this makes sense

 

[Londoner]

As I understand it, and I am willing to be corrected, the copyright belongs to the person who made that transcription. If you made your own transcription, from the original, it would be your copyright.

 

[GJH]

As I understand it, and I am willing to be corrected, the copyright belongs to the person who made that transcription. If you made your own transcription, from the original, it would be your copyright.

Yes. It's similar to scanning an old document (Kelly's Directory for instance) to CD, which we used to do. The copyright in the CD version belonged to us but we could not claim copyright in the original (even though it had expired which made the scanning legal).