Question to publishing rights experts

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

Maybe there are some lawers among us or folks who at least know about those things.

May question is: How can I find out who owns the rights of a 40 or 50 years defunct US American book publishing house today?

[Litterick]

In the European Union and the USA, the author owns the publication rights for life. The author's heirs then own them for the next seventy years.

[RLetson]

There are a couple of issues lurking in there. Book publishing is distinct from music publishing, and a book of musical compositions or arrangements can have overlapping sets of rights. And just to make things more complicated, music publishers (that is, entities that control access to or licensing of a composition) can also produce books of works they control. Or the books can be compilations of licensed works from a variety of other music publishers/rights owners, in which case the particular compilation can be under copyright, while the individual tunes are licensed from other rights-holders.

A adjustment to Litterick's post: music publishing rights can be sold outright (Fats Waller famously sold off some of his songs for ready cash), though they are more usually licensed. Note, for example, who currently owns the rights to Bob Dylan's catalogue. And, depending on the rather arcane details of copyright law, compositions do eventually enter the public domain. If I understand correctly, tunes published before 1929 are now in the public domain. (But beware of arrangements, which can carry their own copyright dates.)

The practical question I have is, what exactly are you looking for? If it's the owner(s) of compositions in a collection, that can be determined via ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC databases, which should list current rights holders. If it's about the book itself, that's a matter of whether there is, say, a successor organization (if the original publisher was acquired).

I should point out that I'm hardly a lawyer or a music-biz expert, but I am a writer familiar with some of the machineries of publishing, as well as part of a folk society that has had to navigate some choppy PRO waters.

[Boss Man Zwiebelsohn]

There are a couple of issues lurking in there. Book publishing is distinct from music publishing, and a book of musical compositions or arrangements can have overlapping sets of rights. And just to make things more complicated, music publishers (that is, entities that control access to or licensing of a composition) can also produce books of works they control. Or the books can be compilations of licensed works from a variety of other music publishers/rights owners, in which case the particular compilation can be under copyright, while the individual tunes are licensed from other rights-holders.

A adjustment to Litterick's post: music publishing rights can be sold outright (Fats Waller famously sold off some of his songs for ready cash), though they are more usually licensed. Note, for example, who currently owns the rights to Bob Dylan's catalogue. And, depending on the rather arcane details of copyright law, compositions do eventually enter the public domain. If I understand correctly, tunes published before 1929 are now in the public domain. (But beware of arrangements, which can carry their own copyright dates.)

The practical question I have is, what exactly are you looking for? If it's the owner(s) of compositions in a collection, that can be determined via ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC databases, which should list current rights holders. If it's about the book itself, that's a matter of whether there is, say, a successor organization (if the original publisher was acquired).

I should point out that I'm hardly a lawyer or a music-biz expert, but I am a writer familiar with some of the machineries of publishing, as well as part of a folk society that has had to navigate some choppy PRO waters.

There are some interesting educational and theory books that I think are worth being republished.

[RLetson]

Bop Head: Did you have specifics in mind in your first post? Because books-as-books is distinct from books-of-compositions. For books-as-books, I start with the copyright page to see exactly who had original ownership and from there search for whether that entity still exists or has been absorbed/acquired by another. The "big five" book publishers, for example, have eaten any number of smaller companies and might now control their properties--or rights agreements might have expired or even been abandoned. I have editor friends who go nuts trying find rights owners for works by dead writers so they can, say, reprint a story that might still be under copyright, depending on a host of conditions. (For example, whether copyright for a given work was renewed by a given date.)

The devil is in the details--in fact, there are gangs of devils hiding out in there.