Does the author or the publisher hold the copyright on a book cover? Generally the author has little input to the creation of the cover.

O'Reilly also are represented among the monks. (I wouldn't blame them if they keep a little quiet about that given threads like O'reilly some sort of perl monopoly? and Boycott O'Reilly, but chromatic at least is prepared to stand up and be counted.)

OP may like to /msg chromatic and get the good oil that way.

I'm sure O'Reilly holds the copyright on the cover and the book. It's unusual for it to be other than the publisher.

I decided not to ask O'Reilly as it would put them in a bad position. You can loose a U.S. copyright if you don't "adequately" protect it, so their future ownership can be weakened every time they say "sure no problem". If the usage is fairly obviously "fair use", and they say nothing, it costs them nothing. At least that's the way I read it.

In any case, it's the PM person who's stuck enforcing the rules that I care about. I'm quite confident O'Reilly won't care, and I can accomodate them easily if I'm wrong on that.

Please note that it's the weekend, it's after hours, I have no formal legal training, and I'm not speaking for my employer. I merely (think that I) understand my employer's perspective on this issue.

O'Reilly holds the copyright on the book on behalf of Damian. This gives O'Reilly the right to prosecute copyright violations as well as to issue reprints and revisions, as desired. (It also frees Damian from having to pursue violations on his own, as that's a big hassle for an individual.)

With few exceptions, a book's title or cover image is very difficult to copyright. (You also don't "lose" a copyright if you don't "protect" it. You're probably thinking of trademark, which is a very different thing. There are no submarine trademarks, if the system works by design.)

O'Reilly does claim trademark over the title and the use of the cover image (and association of a staghound with Perl Best Practices) within a specific trade: technical books. You do have to register a trademark. (I don't know how that works with regard to books; I've never worked on that part.)

However, the important part of trademark is the likelihood of confusion. Is posting a picture of the book online sufficient to confuse people that the book is somehow yours or that you have the official book or represent a product in the same trade as that of the mark holder? It's easier to answer that sentence than to parse it: of course not.

Trademark would come into play if you were to produce a book that had a similar cover or title and try to sell it; then it would be important to decide whether you intended confusion in the marketplace. This is still very distinct from copyright. You could be guilty of trademark infringement without copyright infringement or vice versa.

In other words, you have the right answer (post it; it's cool) though your reasoning isn't quite precisely accurate.

You can loose a U.S. copyright if you don't "adequately" protect it, so their future ownership can be weakened every time they say "sure no problem".

No, you're confusing copyright with trademark. Trademark "cease-and-desist" is an essential part of the game, even if you wanna be a nice guy/gal/company. Copyright, on the other hand, requires no such demonstration of ongoing enforcement. You can ignore 99 violations, and on the 100th one, get real nasty, and it's no problem.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
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