Some of the covers of the Untapped books, designed by Matt Rubinstein of our publishing partner Ligatu.re Followers of the Author's Interest project may remember that back in November 2020 we unveiled an exciting new collaboration: Untapped, the Australian Literary Heritage Project. This initiative, in partnership with the Australian Society of Authors and public libraries … Continue reading Untapped is now live!

We're delighted to announce that our latest research, a whole-of-universe study of copyright termination notices constructed from the US Copyright Office's online catalogue, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Led by Joshua Yuvaraj and Rebecca Giblin of the Melbourne Law School, in collaboration with the Melbourne Data Analytics Platform … Continue reading Who is terminating their copyrights? New research and open access datasets from the Author’s Interest Project

Reversion rights again became a topical issue in Europe following the adoption of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market which introduces a new right of revocation to the EU copyright framework. The right gives effect to a “use-it-or-lose-it” principle, entitling authors and performers to reclaim their works when they are not exploited. … Continue reading Reversion of Copyright in Europe: a special section of the European Intellectual Property Review

The open letter and the Reversion Rights Resource page are a result of a collaboration between IPRIA/Author's Interest Project and CREATe, University of Glasgow. Dr Ula Furgał (CREATe) has joined the Author's Interest Project earlier in 2020 - you can read about it here. This post was first published on the CREATe blog. A group … Continue reading Open letter: Right of revocation – How authors and performers can reclaim their copyrights

Australia has a rich and diverse literary heritage, but much of it is out of print and unavailable to buy or borrow. Many acclaimed novels, powerful poetry collections, ground-breaking plays, award-winning works that explore our country’s history, and much-loved children’s books have dropped out of circulation, often because they’re no longer commercially viable to publishers. … Continue reading Unveiling ‘Untapped’: the Australian Literary Heritage Project

Marco Villar, CC BY Rebecca, Ula, and I are very excited to be presenting on reversion rights with Professor Caroline Ncube (University of Cape Town) and Brianna Schofield (Authors Alliance, US) on Thursday, 22 Oct 2020, 9:00 UTC (20:00 AEDT) at the Creative Commons Global Summit 2020. We look forward to seeing you all there! … Continue reading Creative Commons Global Summit 2020 – Abstracts and Bios

Image from pixabay.com At the Author's Interest Project, we've been looking at reversion rights: that is, an author's rights to regain copyright after a specified time or when certain criteria are met, like a book going out of print. We've looked at why reversion rights matter and why publishing contracts are often inadequate repositories for … Continue reading Exciting new research on the US termination right

João Pombeiro, CC BY We (Ula, Rebecca, and Joshua) are thrilled to announce that the Author's Interest Project will be presenting our research at the Creative Commons Global Summit 2020! Together with Brianna Schofield (US Authors Alliance) and Dr Caroline Ncube (University of Cape Town, South Africa), we'll be talking about reversion rights, why they … Continue reading The Author’s Interest Project at Creative Commons Global Summit 2020!

I'm delighted to announce that the Copyright Society of Australia and the Intellectual Property Research Institution of Australia are hosting their first joint seminar. It will feature findings from the Author's Interest Project's recent research into publishing contracts, and a lively discussion about the case for introducing new baseline minimum legal protections into Australian law. … Continue reading Are contracts enough? The case for better creator protections in Australia