Originally Posted by
rwanttaja
It's a thorny issue.
First keep in mind that EVERYTHING someone writes is, technically, copyrighted. Copyright laws exist to support the generators of content, and they don't have to add a formal copyright notice nor file anything with the government.
What does come into play, legally, is the ability to win damages for someone violating their copyright. To be able to defend a copyright, the author needs to apply a notice that the work *is* copyrighted. If the author files a copyright with the government, it gives the opportunity to win hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.
Copyright "used" to last 75 years after the death of the author. This changed when Disney was in danger of having Mickey Mouse and other of their cartoon characters enter the public domain. Nowadays, I have no idea what the standard is.
One of the biggest thing with copyrighted material is "fair use." It basically is a legal concept that allows others to use copyrighted materials as long as the author's interests are not affected.
You can do a search for "fair use" and find a lot of description of it. It depends on how much of the work is copied, and what is the purpose of the copying. Educational institutions get some slack, and if you're just copying one or two pages from a ~300-page work, that's not an issue.
For aircraft plans, the first thing to do is to check to see if there's a copyright notice. If there is, it's time to be cautious.. maybe the designer himself is dead, but his children might claim ownership of the rights. They may even not want the plans distributed due to liability issues.
If there's NOT a copyright notice, remember that, technically, they ARE copyrighted. If the original designer (or his heirs) want to protect their rights, it's not fair for you to usurp their ability to control the work.
Onesie-twosie copying, you won't get into trouble. Try to sell copies, though, and you could end up in trouble.
Keep in mind there's a place in Russia that sells dozens, if not HUNDREDS of pirated copies of homebuilt aircraft plans. It's much harder for someone in the west to use Russian courts to stop these guys. They only sell digital copies, though, so you have to consider if you want to stick a hacker-generated CD-ROM or memory stick into your own computer...
Best bet would be to contact type groups for the airplane you're interested in...someone there can probably give you an idea of whether they're protected or not.
Ron Wanttaja