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Copyright Law and Mark Twain?s Autobiography

For an interesting view of how complex copyright law has become, see the following, keeping in mind that Mark Twain?s Autobiography has this back-story, from the Mark Twain Papers and Project:

??At the time of his death in 1910, Mark Twain left his last major literary work?an autobiography?unpublished and stipulated that the entire unexpurgated work should not be issued for at least a hundred years after his death. In November 2010, the year that marks the centenary of Twain's death, UC Press has issued the first volume of a complete three-volume critical edition of the autobiography, edited by the staff of the Mark Twain Project. A digital edition with a complete textual apparatus?not included in the print version?is available at the Mark Twain Project Online?.? (Link to full website.)

Read on ?:

Copyright Law and Mark Twain?s Autobiography (from LibraryLaw):

Excerpt: ?? I told the story of Mark Twain?s copyrights on page 44 of ?Copyright & Cultural Institutions? (http://hdl.handle.net/1813/14142) - though I did not speak specifically to Twain's autobiography. At the heart of the story is the fact that Berkeley offered for sale in 2001 a microfilm set that apparently contained the Autobiography. I can?t see that anyone actually bought the microfilm set, but by offering it for sale, California extended the copyright on the manuscript until 2047....? (Link to full blog post.)

Full post as published by Oregon Legal Research on November 26, 2010 (boomark / email).