A LOT TO DO ABOUT NOTHING - HEATHKIT MANUALS

[W3DBJ]

Terry,

The inclusion of owners manuals as part of the intellectual property is 
dubious from a legal standpoint, due to the number of years that they have 
been publicly available with no action being taken by Heath or their Agents. 
There is also a very grey area, since the "intellectual property" contained 
therein, equated to a complete knowledge transfer from Heath to the builder 
of that product - Therefore, the Heath company released the information with 
the intent that it would be shared between them and the owner/builder of the 
kit, and there was no explicit agreement in place to prevent aforementioned 
party from further sharing the knowledge that was transferred to the kit 
builder.

Notwithstanding, the Fair Use Act in the United States: Article I, § 8, cl. 
8, which states that copyright material may be shared under Fair Use for, 
and I quote: "the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Use of this material 
also does not "affect the original copyright owner's ability to exploit his 
original work" - since Heath are no longer the copyright holders.

I have a FTP server, and if anyone wants to email me, I will create an 
upload account for them to upload strictly Heathkit build instructions and 
circuit diagrams, and let the cards fall where they may.

Darryl

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "J Forster" <jfor at QUIK.COM>
To: <BOATANCHORS at LISTS.TEMPE.GOV>
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 7:08 PM
Subject: Re: A LOT TO DO ABOUT NOTHING - HEATHKIT MANUALS


> All and well, but the removal of the Heath stuff from BAMA makes life a
> lot harder for someone who just wants a book for his latest flea toy.
>
> -John
>
> ==================
>
> Terry Muncey wrote:
>
>> I happen to be in what I call the old information business.   When I 
>> first got into this business, I spent well into 5 figures in legal advice 
>> and time in Washington, D.C. at the Library of Congress checking out 
>> copyright registrations and copyright expiration dates.  That was 15 
>> years ago..  So in writing this snippet about copyrights and trademarks, 
>> I do have somewhat of a dog in this fight.
> [snip]
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This list is a public service of the City of Tempe, Arizona
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subscription control - 
> http://www.tempe.gov/lists/control.aspx?list=BOATANCHORS
> To post - BOATANCHORS at LISTS.TEMPE.GOV
> Archives - http://lists.tempe.gov/archives/BOATANCHORS.html 

-----------------------------------------------------------
This list is a public service of the City of Tempe, Arizona
-----------------------------------------------------------

Subscription control - http://www.tempe.gov/lists/control.aspx?list=BOATANCHORS
To post - BOATANCHORS at LISTS.TEMPE.GOV
Archives - http://lists.tempe.gov/archives/BOATANCHORS.html