Public Domain

Blair Laird

Sovereign Grace Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects by Dwight L Moody 1891 edition the copyright is out on it. I noticed the book has been republished by another company in 2010. Does that change anything? If one has access to the 1891 edition it still can be recompiled into p.b.b right?

Matthew C Jones

Sovereign Grace Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects by Dwight L Moody 1891 edition the copyright is out on it. I noticed the book has been republished by another company in 2010. Does that change anything? If one has access to the 1891 edition it still can be recompiled into p.b.b right?

Yes, the original 1891 edition is fair game for anyone to produce. The only claim a subsequent publisher can make on it is for any additional content that the publisher added to the public domain work. That would include new translation efforts, footnotes, a search engine or user interface that makes access more convenient. I have also heard copyright claims on new typesetting and the work of scanning & typing the original into digital format. There are copy protection schemes employed by publishers to prove claims in court  against unscrupulous copy-cats. They include digital watermarks, intentional typographical errors & minute creative changes that only the publisher knows the exact details of.

But don't worry about all that. If you copy the original 1891 edition and do the import work yourself to get it into Personal Book Tools, you only need to worry about trying to disseminate the content through Logos channels if Logos also produces the same title. [:O] I don't think you will have any problem creating a PB for your own personal library.

One more legal technicality: If you use Adobe, Microsoft or special OCR & scanning software, make sure the license allows you to create commercial content before you go selling it. Some Academic or "Not-For-Resale" software forbids any commercial use of the applications.